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Lenin 








NIKOLAI 
ILYICH 
LENIN 





LEON 
UR i 2 ky 





CEN 


By 
LEON TROTZKY 


Ev 


Authorized Translation 





BLUE RIBBON BOOKS, INc. 
NEW YORK CITY 





oy 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY 
MINTON, BALCH & COMPANY, 


PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE CORNWALL PRESS, INC., FOR 
BLUE RIBBON BOOKS, INC., 386 FOURTH AVE., NEW YORK CITY 


Printed in the United States ef America 


INTRODUCTION 


For American readers a correlation of the 
events and personalities which are the subject 
matter of these pages will disclose in a clearer 
light the contribution which Trotzky makes to 
the secret history of the Russian revolutionary 
movement. It is worth while to remember that 
only a comparatively few men are or have been 
able to offer comprehensive contributions to that 
secret history, and one of them is Trotzky. From 
the nature of the steps taken in the period of agi- 
tation and plotting which preceded the overthrow 
of Czarism and the subsequent triumph of Bol- 
shevism, concealment was all important, and the 
full purposes of the leaders were known only to a 
small inner circle. 

Writers, speakers, plotters, shrinking into the 
shadows when the need of self-preservation came, 
moved like figures in a fog, onward toward a goal 
which, beyond the general purpose of uprooting 
the imperial régime, was still indeterminate. 
Their names were unknown, or scarcely known, or 
were changed on occasion to deceive the Czar’s 
secret police. 


[vi] 


INTRODUCTION 


In this obscure background, what brought 
Lenin and Trotzky together in an association 
which meant so much? The author begins his 
book with a reminiscent account of their first 
meeting, which is intended to throw light pri- 
marily upon the character of Lenin, but which re- 
veals his own aims and methods with a touch 
scarcely less intimate. These men, unknown to 
each other, markedly different in origin and 
early environment, had started by a common im- 
pulse along the same road and their paths hap- 
pened to converge for the first time in 1902. 
Trotzky, born at Kherson in 1877, the son of a 
Jewish chemist named Bronstein, was expelled 
from school for the reason, it is said, that he dese- 
crated an ikon, and he early developed irrepress- 
ible radical tendencies. At the age of 22 years 
he joined in a revolutionary plot at Odessa. and 
was banished to Siberia, but escaped at the end of 
three years with his ardor unchilled by his stay 
in the frozen region of the Lena. 

While in exile he read with avidity smuggled 
copies of “Iskra” (the spark), a journal pub- 
lished under Lenin’s direction, with its companion 
“theoretical” magazine, ‘Saria” (Dawn), circu- 
lated from London and Geneva. After his es- 
cape he worked secretly in Russia for a short time, 
eluding the carefully spread net of the police, 


[vi | 


INTRODUCTION 


forming circles for aiding the subversive propa- 
ganda of “Iskra.” In the autumn of 1902 he went 
to London, where he obtained a coveted place on 
the staff of that paper after a preliminary quizzing 
by the mysterious chief of the organization. 

Trotzky, then but an eager fledgling in the revo- 
lutionary cause, discloses something of the awe 
with which he looked upon Lenin, who had al- 
ready written “The Development of Capitalism 
in Russia” and was in the prime of his powers. 
Lenin (Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov) had the ad- 
vantages that came from a fuller educational and 
social background. His father was a school su- 
perintendent at Simbirsk, where he was born, 
and had the bourgeois title of State Councilor. 
The son was reared in the Orthodox Church, 
studied at the Universities of Kazan and St. Peters- 
burg, and prepared himself to become a lawyer, 
but his radical inclinations drew him away from 
that career. His brother was hanged in 1887 for 
taking part in a plot to murder Alexander III. 

In 1895 Lenin organized a “Union for the Lib- 
eration of the Working Class” and was promptly 
exiled. After his term in Siberia had expired, 
he went abroad, embittered and resolute, to de- 
vote himself to leadership in behalf of revolution. 
He was absent from Russia almost continuously 
from that time until a month after the spring re- 


[ vii | 


INTRODUCTION 


volt in 1917 spread before him the vision which 
he had cherished in years of penury and wan- 
dering. 

The staff of ‘“Iskra” was near a break-up when 
Trotzky joined it. He had been associated with 
Lenin less than a year when the factions in the 
Russian Socialist Party, ever ready for contro- 
versy, girded themselves for the “split of 1903.” 
The party’s Congress held in Switzerland in that 
year definitely separated into Bolsheviki and Men- 
sheviki, and Trotzky could bring himself at first 
to espouse neither side. He was for steering a 
middle course and formed a small party of his 
own, which took him away from Lenin, who con- 
sidered his course opportunistic. 

The revolution of 1905 brought them together 
again, but only for a short time. During that out- 
break, the forerunner of the convulsion of 1917, 
Lenin edited a radical paper in St. Petersburg. 
Trotzky was president of the Council of Work- 
men in the same city and was exiled again, this 
time for life. He escaped in six months and aban- 
doned his name of Bronstein, taking that of a 
guard named Trotzky. Fleeing abroad, he agi- 
tated in France, Switzerland, Austria and Ger- 
many, writing constantly for radical papers. 

Lenin, apart from Trotzky, pursued the fixed 
course which he had set for himself, never giving 

[ viii ] 


INTRODUCTION 


up his belief that an overturn which would facil- 
itate his purposes was at hand. He had full con- 
fidence in his own methods and was mistrustful of 
men whom he suspected of a timidity which he 
regarded as fatal to the revolutionary cause. 

At the outbreak of the World War in 1914, 
Lenin was in Galicia, where he had found a con- 
venient base for fomenting discontent in Russia. 
He was arrested but released, and transferred his 
operations to Switzerland, where he continued 
them until 1917. 

Trotzky, who was the editor of a Jewish news- 
paper in Berlin in 1914, was banished from Ger- 
many as a “dangerous anarchist.” He took refuge 
first in Vienna and then in Zurich and Paris. Ex- 
pelled from France, jailed in Spain, he decided to 
sail for the United States, and in New York began 
a new career along the old lines, writing for 
Jewish and Russian papers and speaking at meet- 
ings of radicals. He had often tasted poverty and 
in the Bronx, where he lived with his wife and two 
sons, he was reduced to such straits that only with 
the help of friends was he able to sustain his 
family. 

Then came the amazing transformation of 1917. 
The impoverished exile of the Bronx, writing 
ceaselessly and fiercely against the war, became in 
less than two years the negotiator of the treaty of 


[ ix ] 


INTRODUCTION 


Brest-Litovsk, which took Russia out of the war. 
He sailed from New York March 27, 1917, after 
about a year in America, and, though detained by 
the British at Halifax, he was released at the inter- 
cession of the Kerensky government, and contrived 
finally to reach Russia. 

Meanwhile, with little loss of time, Lenin had 
been whirled across Germany from Switzerland 
with the consent of the Kaiser’s general staff, 
which he was willing to use (as he explained fully 
later) in the pursuit of his object, and in Petro- 
grad fate again brought him in contact with the 
one-time neophyte of “‘Iskra.’’ Here was the cul- 
mination and blending of their careers. Now 
they were in full agreement. The ambitions dimly 
sensed in years of hiding, hoping, striving, came 
to fruition. Once more, as in their life in London, 
they were collaborators, but now in the realm of 
deeds rather than of words, 

Yet for both it was allotted to taste the bitter- 
ness as well as the sweetness of the fruit for which 
during all those years they had been reaching. 
Bullets fired by Dora Kaplan, a revolutionist 
whom the extreme measures of the Bolsheviki 
had roused to fury, brought Lenin to depths of 
pain and weakness at the perihelion of his power. 
Although he recovered temporarily, the shock 
robbed him of some of his physical resistance and 


[x ] 


INTRODUCTION 


made him prey to the disease which cost his life. 
In the high tide of Communist experimentation 
which he had so ardently desired, he was forced to 
admit that he had gone too fast and compelled to 
sound his “economic retreat’’—a concession to the 
institutions of capitalism which was defended as 
a measure of expediency in the shadow of famine 
and industrial paralysis. 

When he died, and received posthumous honors 
as the titular leader and visible embodiment of the 
Communist creed, the ends for which he had 
striven, to bring Russia into a prosperous condition 
under the régime of the proletariat, and to act as 
leaders in a world-wide revolution, were still far 
short of fulfillment. 

Trotzky was left, the second of the duumvirate 
of defiant iconoclasm and resistance to the forces 
of “bourgeois” society, the war minister of Soviet 
Russia, the man of action in a régime of theory. 
Was the personal tragedy of Lenin only for Lenin, 
and was his fiery, restless associate to be spared to 
enjoy triumph alone? Were pzans of Communist 
gratitude bestowed upon Lenin dead to be con- 
tinued for Trotzky living? 

Only a few months passed after Lenin’s death 
before Trotzky, whose hand was supposed to be 
powerful enough to call millions in arms to assist 
him, felt the subtle entanglements of the intrigue 


[ xi | 


INTRODUCTION 


and rivalry which are the inevitable accompani- 
ments of a change of order. His prestige fell 
away from him and at last, deposed from office as 
war minister, no weapon was left to him more 
deadly than his pen with which to combat the mul- 
titude of enemies around him. 

Trotzky may have written too much, if only his 
personal fortunes be considered, but not too much 
for history. His estimate of Lenin now given re- 
veals frankly the course of their relations in some 
of the most significant periods of the Communist 
struggle for the remaking of Russia—indeed, for 
the remaking of the fabric of the civilized world 
of which they had both dreamed in the exuberance 
of a zeal which set no limit to hopes. 

Beginning with their days together as writers 
for the old “Iskra,” he gives a picture of the 
shrewd, cautious, thoughtful Lenin, gentle in 
many of his personal relations, jocular at times, 
but sternly impatient of opposition, bent upon the 
attainment of his ends at any cost, even at the cost 
of blood. Vera Ivanovna Sasulich, one of the 
band in London, said to Lenin: “George (Ple- 
chanof) is a greyhound. He shakes and shakes 
his adversary and lets him go, but you are a bull- 
dog; you have a deadly bite.” Lenin liked this 
view of himself. He showed (on a “small scale” 
then) the “persistent, stubborn directness of pur- 


[ xi | 


INTRODUCTION 


pose, that made use of all circumstances, stopped 
at no formality and was the characteristic of Lenin 
as a leader.” Lenin was the “political guide” of 
Iskra. He “forced himself into tomorrow in his 
thoughts,” and, of the group in London “‘he alone,” 
Trotzky writes, “represented the coming day.” 

This was the younger Lenin, his traits, his intel- 
lectual scope, already marked clearly. Trotzky 
enlarges upon the development of these traits in 
Petrograd in the fateful days of October, 1917, 
and afterward. Lenin was for seizing power 
without equivocation. ‘Nothing was so repug- 
nant” to him as “the slightest suspicion of senti- 
mentality.” Yet he was impatient of hasty, ill- 
prepared steps, and admitted that blunders were 
made in the Bolshevist tactics. 

He disagreed with some of his colleagues and 
Trotzky does not hesitate to set down these dis- 
agreements, the revelation of which has been the 
principal cause of the war minister’s fall. In 
Trotzky’s opinion, Lenin “overestimated the saga- 
city and resolution of the enemy.” When at last 
power was in their hands, Lenin turned to inter- 
national revolutionary action. Always he was for 
warfare on the existing order. 

As Trotzky writes, in a style characteristically 
fervid, his recollections and impressions of Lenin, 
they thus cover four stages: first, the period of 

[ xiii | 


INTRODUCTION 


preparation for the revolution when the elements 
of discontent in Russia, to which the war with 
Japan and the World War gave unexpected 
growth, were nursed into proportions as truly na- 
tional as anything in Russia can be; second, the 
time when the Bolshevist program for seizing 
power was being formulated and executed; third, 
the era of Bolshevist supremacy, with its disclosure 
of mistakes in the estimation of eventualities, espe- 
cially the mistake of counting upon a world-wide 
revolution; and fourth, the period of the passing 
of Lenin, with the view of his role as it appears 
in the long perspective to his chief lieutenant. 
Trotzky may be questioned as to facts; his con- 
clusions may be assailed; but there is no doubt 
of the value of his testimony as to the manner of 
man who dominated Russia during the first years 
when the repressive force of Czarism was removed 
from the organic structure of that strange political 
patchwork which until March, 1917, was called 


the Russian Empire. 
The Publishers 


[ xiv ] 


CONTENTS 


ERTRODUCTION (30 ERO Sa eeiaade 


FOREWORD 


e e e ° ° . e ' s 


TLLENIN: AND THE OLD SISKRAY | os Cee 


OOTOBERIS IGT aren cle Minor yet Beare 


I BrroreE OCTOBER . . . 

UE EME MOLU LION 5 eh eonece ia tomes 
PEL SUISREST-LAISOVSR Ong ae 
IV BREAKING Up THE CONSTITUENT 

MASSEMBL YOM yWiine i eh eri gealunrg 
V ForMING A GOVERNMENT. .. . 
VI Tue CzeEcHo-SLOVAKS AND THE 
Lerr SociAL REVOLUTIONARIES 
VII LENINON THE PLATFORM. . . 
VIII THe PHILISTINE AND THE REVO- 

LUTIONARY . 

PRE EELEN INLAND ie he a ea Cot ACen 


NATIONALISMIN LENIN . . . . . 
PLEMING VV OUNDED Cokie ek vue mahal eae 
BETORIEN ALE. Soe h  Reon Pay Ca SEEM NOTE les 

NIM EDAD TS eh ON TL nate en nan. 


103 


11g 
132 


rez 
162 


172 


187 
189 
197 
206 
214 


i Ay ip 
OHV aL + 
Sp iy Nie 
Tih "5 By |S M) 

(Soe ¥ 


iy Ms 





FOREWORD 


HIS book is not complete and there are 
two reasons for this. Above all things one 
must not look in it for a biography or 
character study of Lenin or a complete exposition 
of his views or methods of action. This work 
offers only some sketches, fragments, outlines for 
future work of others, possibly also for a book by 
the author of these lines. This “sketchy” method 
is in the meantime inevitable and necessary. Be- 
sides the popular biographies and general char- 
acter studies, there is already need of a more 
detailed and careful work in order to keep in 
touch with the particular episodes, the particular 
features of Lenin’s life and personality as they 
occurred before our eyes. The most important 
part of this book consists of the author’s recollec- 
tions of two periods between which lie fifteen 
years: the last half year of the old “Iskra,” and 
the decisive year in the middle of which the 
October Revolution occurred, that is, from about 
the middle of 1917 to the autumn of 1918. 
But this book has not been finished for another, 
simpler reason: I hope that circumstances will 
[ xvii | 


FOREWORD 


permit me to do further work on it, to make im- 
provements and corrections, to put it into more 
precise form, and complete it by new episodes and 
chapters. Illness and the consequent temporary 
withdrawal from active work gave me the oppor- 
tunity to live over again in memory much that is 
told in this book. When I read the first fragments 
I unrolled the coil of memory further and recalled 
new episodes that are significant solely because 
they refer to Lenin’s life or are connected with 
him. But this method of work involves the dis- 
advantage that the product of the work is never 
finished. For this reason then I decided to cut 
short the manuscript mechanically, at a definite 
moment. At the same time I reserve the privilege 
—as I have already said—of working further on 
this book. I need not say that I shall be most 
grateful to all concerned in the events and episodes 
of the time described if they will inform me of any 
corrections, or add any recollections. 

On the other hand, it is not superfluous to say 
in advance that I have purposely omitted a num- 
ber of circumstances that are still too closely bound 
up with the events of the day. 

To the two main parts of the book that are in 
the form of memoirs I add those articles and 
speeches, or parts of speeches, in which I wished 
to characterize Lenin. 

[ xvili | 


FOREWORD 


In my work on these recollections I have used 
scarcely any material dealing with the time 
pictured. This seemed to me best, as I did not 
set myself the task of presenting a complete his- 
torical sketch of Lenin’s life, but only wished to 
offer material from the original source, in this case 
the author, by depending only on my own memory. 

After this work had been written in the main, I 
read Volume XIV of Lenin’s works, and Comrade 
Ovsjannikof’s little book about the Brest-Litovsk 
peace, and made some additions to my work. But 
they were very few. 


L. TROTSKY 


P.S. On reading over what I had written I 
found that I had called Leningrad in my recollec- 
tions either Petrograd or Petersburg, while many 
other comrades call the Petrograd of old times 
Leningrad. This seems to me wrong. Can one 
say, for example: Lenin was imprisoned in Lenin- 
grade It is clear that Lenin could not be im- 
prisoned in Leningrad. Still less can one say: 
Peter I founded Leningrad. Perhaps in the course 
of years or decades the new name of the city—as 
all proper names in general—will lose its actual 
historical meaning. But for the present we still 
feel too clearly and acutely that Petrograd is called 
Leningrad only since the 21st of January, 1924, 


faxins| 


FOREWORD 


and could not be called so before. Therefore in 
these recollections of Leningrad I keep to the 
name by which it was known in the time of the 
events described. 


21st April, 1924 1 Barat Re 


[xx] 


Lenin and the Old “Iskra” 





LENIN 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


a9 


“The split of 1903 was, so to speak, an onticipation .. . 
(Lenin’s words in a speech in 1910.) 


NDOUBTEDLY the period of the old 
“Iskra” (1900 to 1903) will be of ex- 
ceptional psychological interest to the 
future great biographer of Lenin, but at the same 
time will present great difficulties: for in just these 
short years Lenin was precisely Lenin. That does 
not mean that he did not grow more. On the con- 
trary he grew—and in what proportions!—just as 
much before “October” as after October. But it 
is a more organic growth. Great indeed was the 
leap from illegality to power on October 25th, 
1917; but this was the outward so-called material 
leap of a man who had weighed and measured all 
that a man can weigh and measure. But in the 
growth that preceded the split at the Second Party 
Congress lies an inner leap, imperceptible to the 
outer eye, but so much the more definite. 
These recollections offer the future biographer 


[3] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


material about this extraordinarily noteworthy 
and significant period in the mental development 
of Vladimir Ilyich. From that time to the mo- 
ment these lines were written more than two dec- 
ades have passed, and decades moreover that are 
an unusual burden to human memory. That may 
evoke the natural anxiety as to what degree what is 
told here presents correctly the events of the past. 
I confess that I am not free from this anxiety 
myself and shall not be so long as I am at work at 
this book; besides, there are more than enough of 
incorrect recollections and inexact testimony! 
While writing this sketch I had no documents, 
memoranda, nor material of any kind at hand. 
However, I believe this was an advantage. I had 
to depend entirely on my memory and hope that 
its independent work in these conditions is spared 
from involuntary retrospective touchings-up that 
are so difficult to avoid even in the most critical 
self-examination. The future investigator too will 
find the work easier when he takes up this book 
after he has had in his hand the documents and 
all the material connected with this period. 

In some places I present the conversations and 
discussions of the time in dialogue form. As a 
matter of course, after more than two decades, one 
can scarcely claim to give an exact repetition of 
the dialogues. But I believe that I present the 


| [4] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


substance of them correctly and many particularly 
impressive expressions word for word. 

As it is a question of material for a life of Lenin, 
consequently a matter of exceeding importance, I 
may be permitted to say a few words about certain 
peculiarities of my faculty of remembrance. I 
have a very bad memory for the topography of 
cities and even of houses. In London, for example, 
I have lost my way more than once on the com- 
paratively short stretch between Lenin’s home and 
my own. Fora long time I had a very bad memory 
for faces but in this respect I have made important 
progress. But I used to have, and still have today, 
a particularly good memory for ideas, their com- 
bination, and for conversations about ideological 
themes. I could often prove that this estimation 
is not subjective: other people, who heard the 
same conversations as I, often repeated them less 
accurately than I and acknowledged my correc- 
tions to be right. Moreover, I had come to 
London as a young provincial with the most ar- 
dent desire to understand everything as quickly 
as possible. Therefore it is natural if the con- 
versations with Lenin and the other members of 
the “Iskra” staff are firmly impressed on my 
memory. These are considerations that the 
biographer cannot disregard in estimating the 
trustworthiness of the recollections that follow. 


[5] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


I arrived in London in the autumn of 1902. It 
must have been in October and early in the morn- 
ing. A cab that I engaged because I saw others 
doing so took me to an address jotted down on a 
scrap of paper, my destination. This was Vladi- 
mir Ilyich’s home. Before this (it must have 
been in Zurich) I had been taught to knock at a 
door in a certain definite way. As far as I re- 
member Nadezda Constantinovna opened the door 
for me; I had gotten her out of bed with my 
knocking, as one can imagine. It was early in the 
morning, and any sensible man, more familiar 
with the ordinary conventions of life, would have 
waited an hour or two at the station, instead of 
knocking at strange doors atdawn. But I was still 
completely under the influence of my flight from 
Vercholensk.t I had already roused Axelrod’s 
household in Zurich in the same way, only not at 
dawn but in the middle of the night. 

Vladimir Ilyich was still in bed and he greeted 
me with justifiable surprise. Under such condi- 
tions our first meeting and our first conversation 
took place. Vladimir Ilyich and Nadezda Con- 
stantinovna knew me already through a letter 
from Claire (M. G. Krchichanovsky), who had 
officially introduced me in Samara to the organi- 


*The district on the upper Lena to which Trotzky had been 
banished. 
| [6] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


zation of “Iskra” under the name of “Pen.” So 
I was greeted thus: ‘Hello, ‘Pen’ has come. . . .” 

They gave me tea in the kitchen, I believe. In 
the meantime Lenin dressed. I told them about 
my flight and complained about the bad condition 
of “Iskra’s” frontier organization: it was in the 
hands of a social revolutionary grammar-school 
teacher who was not in great sympathy with the 
“Tskra” people on account of a highly inflamed 
polemic; besides the smugglers had plundered me 
mercilessly and had raised all the tariffs and 
rates,” 

I gave to Nadezda Constantinovna my modest 
pack of addresses and news or, to be more exact, 
data about the necessary liquidation of some useless 
publications. By order of the Samara group 
(Claire and others) I had visited Kharkof, Pol- 
tava, and Kief and had to establish everywhere, 
at any rate in Kharkof and Poltava, very weak 
organizing connections. 

I no longer remember whether it was this morn- 
ing or another day that I took a long walk with 
Viadimir Ilyich through London. He showed 
me Westminster Abbey (from outside) and some 
other famous buildings. I no longer know how 
he expressed himself but the meaning was: that 
is “their famous Westminster.” The “their” 


*For the illegal forwarding of “Iskra” to Russia.—Translator. 


bya 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


meant, naturally, not the English, but the enemy. 
Not emphatic at all, rather deeply organic and 
revealed by the pitch of his voice, this meaning 
was always obvious when he spoke of any kind of 
cultural values or new conquests, whether it were 
about the edification of the British Museum or 
the richness of information of the “Times” or, 
many years later, German artillery or French 
aviation: They understand or they have, they 
have accomplished or succeeded—but always as 
enemies! The invisible shadow of the share- 
holders of society lay, as it were, in his eyes on all 
human culture, and this shadow he felt as incon- 
testably as the daylight. 

As far as I remember I paid little attention 
then to the architecture of London. Transported 
from Vercholensk abroad for the very first time, 
I accepted Vienna, Paris, and London rather 
summarily, and did not care for “details” such as 
Westminster. And naturally Vladimir Ilyich had 
not invited me to take that long walk for that 
reason. His purpose was to get to know me and 
examine me. And the examination in reality 
covered “the whole course.” In answer to his 
questions I gave him details of exile on the Lena 
and its inner groupings. ‘The attitude towards 
active political struggle, to the central organiza- 


[8] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


tion and to the terror, formed the chief line of 
division at that time. 

“Well, but were there not differences of opinion 
in connection with Bernstein’s policy?” asked 
Viadimir Ilyich. 

I told him how we had read Bernstein’s book 
and Kautsky’s in the Moscow prison and then in 
exile. Not one of the Marxists among us raised 
his voice for Bernstein. We looked upon it as a 
matter of course, so to speak, that Kautsky was 
right. But we did not draw any lines of com- 
munication between the theoretical struggle that 
was developing on an international scale and our 
own organizing political discussions, did not even 
think of them, not at least before we had read on 
the Lena the first numbers of “Iskra” and Lenin’s 
pamphlet: “What Is to Be Doner” I told him, 
moreover, how we had read with great interest 
Bogdanof’s philosophical pamphlets and I re- 
member very clearly the import of Vladimir 
Ilyich’s remark: to him too the pamphlet about 
the historical way of contemplation of nature 
seemed very valuable, but Plechanof did not agree 
with it, and declared it was not materialistic. 
Vladimir Ilyich had then no views of his own 
about this question and only repeated Plechanof’s 
opinion, with esteem for his philosophical author- 


[9] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


ity, but also with uneasiness. Plechanof’s views 
amazed me then very much. 

_ Lenin examined me also on economics. I told 
him how we had studied in common in the Mos- 
cow prison his book “The Development of 
Capitalism in Russia” and in exile were working 
through “Capital”? but had stopped at the second 
volume. I mentioned the enormous amount of 
statistical material worked out in ““The Develop- 
ment of Capitalism.” 

“In the Moscow prison we have often spoken 
with astonishment of this colossal work.”’ 

“Yes, indeed, it was not done all at once,” Lenin 
answered. 

It evidently pleased him that the young com- 
trades studied carefully his most important 
economic work. 

We spoke then of Michailisky’s appearance, of 
the impression that he had made on us in exile 
and to which many succumbed. I told him that 
the first hectographed number of Michailisky that 
reached us “up there’ on the Lena made a strong 
impression on the majority of us as a sharp critique 
of social democratic opportunism and in this sense 
corresponded with the train of thought aroused 
by the polemic between Kautsky and Bernstein. 
The second number in which Michailisky “tears 
away the mask” from the Marxist formulas o 


[ 10 ] | 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


reproduction and presents it as a theoretical justi- 
fication of profit-sharing of the proletariat through 
the intelligence, aroused theoretical indignation in 
us. The third number, finally. which we received 
later, with its positive program in which the 
residue of economics is connected with the germ 
of syndicalism had the effect upon us of complete 
bankruptcy. 

My further work was only touched upon in 
general in this conversation. I wanted to familiar- 
ize myself first of all with the literature that had 
appeared, and then I suggested going back to 
Russia illegally. It was decided that I should 
first “look round”’ a little. 

Nadezda Constantinovna found me lodgings 
some distance away in the house where Sasulich, 
Martof and Blumenfeld lived, the latter the man 
who published “Iskra.” ‘There was a vacant room 
there for me. The house was of the usual English 
form of construction and did not spread out 
horizontally but vertically: on the lower floor the 
owner lived, and then came the tenants one above 
the other. The common room, that Plechanof had 
named “the den” on his first visit, was still free. 
Not without fault on the part of Vera Ivanovna 
Sasulich, but also not without Martof’s assistance, 
great disorder reigned in this room. Here we 


[11] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


drank coffee, had long talks here, smoked, etc. 
Hence the name. 

Thus began the short London | of my life. 
I devoured hungrily the back numbers of “Iskra”’ 
and the pamphlets of “Saria”* (Dawn). At this 
time also I began my work on the “‘Iskra.”’ 

I wrote a short article on the 200 years jubilee of 
the Schliisselburg fortress. I believe it was my 
first work for the “Iskra.” ‘The article closed 
with the words of Homer, or, to be exact, the words 
of Homer’s translator, Gnedich. I quoted the 
“invincible hands” that the revolution was laying 
on Czarism. (On the journey from Siberia I had 
read the Iliad in the train.) The article pleased 
Lenin. But he had justifiable doubts about “‘in- 
vincible hands” and expressed them to me with 
goodnatured banter. ‘“‘But that is a verse of 
Homer,” I said to justify myself, but admitted 
gladly that the classical quotation was not neces- 
sary. The article is to be found in “Iskra,” but 
without the “invincible hands.” 

I then went with my first reports to Whitechapel 
where I went about with the “old” Tchaikovsky 
(he was already an old man) and with the 
anarchist Tcherkesof, who was also no longer 
young. Finally I was genuinely astonished that 


*“Saria” was the theoretical organ of the “Iskra” organization.— 
Translator. 
[12] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


well-known, gray-bearded exiles could utter such 
down-right nonsense. . . . London’s “old citizen,” 
Alexief, was the go-between with Whitechapel, 
an exile and Marxist, who was connected with the 
“Iskra.” He initiated me into English life and 
was in general the source of all my knowledge. I 
remember that after a detailed conversation with 
him on the way to Whitechapel and back I told 
Vladimir Ilyich of two of Alexief’s opinions. The 
one concerned the breaking up of the political 
régime in Russia, the other Kautsky’s last pam- 
phlet. ‘This breaking up will not come gradu- 
ally,” said Alexief, “but very abruptly, on account 
of the crudity of the autocracy.”’ The word crudity 
(cruelty, severity, obstinacy) I noticed particu- 
larly. 

“Well, he may be right,” said Lenin when he 
had heard my story to the end. 

Alexief’s second declaration of opinion was 
about Kautsky’s pamphlet: ‘The Day after the 
Social Revolution.” I knew Lenin was much 
interested in the little book, that, in his own words, 
he had read it twice, and was reading it for the 
third time; I believe also that he edited the 
Russian translation. I had just studied the pam- 
phlet carefully at Vladimir Ilyich’s suggestion. 
Alexief thought the work opportunist. : 

‘“Blockhead,” said Lenin unexpectedly, and 


Eira 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


puckered his lips angrily, which was always a sign 
of dissatisfaction in him. 

Alexief himself had the greatest regard for 
Lenin: ‘I believe he is more important for the 
revolution than Plechanof.” Naturally I said 
nothing about this to Lenin, but I told it to Martof. 
He made no reply. 

The editorial staff of “Iskra” and “Saria” con- 
sisted of six persons: three “old” people, Ple- 
chanof, Sasulich, and Axelrod, and three young 
ones: Lenin, Martof, and Potresof. Plechanof and 
Axelrod lived in Switzerland, Sasulich in London 
with the young people. Potresof was then some- 
where on the continent. This local separation in- 
volved many technical inconveniences which, how- 
ever, did not trouble Lenin, but rather the 
contrary. Before my journey to the continent he 
initiated me cautiously in the internal relations of 
the staff and said that Plechanof urged the removal 
of the entire staff to Switzerland, but that he, 
Lenin, was opposed to it as it would make the 
work more difficult. Then I understood for the 
first time, but still quite dimly, that the staff's 
remaining in London did not depend only on 
police regulations but also on the organizing per- 
sonnel. 

In the organizing political work Lenin wanted 
to be as independent as possible of the old men, of 


ehar 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


Plechanof above all, with whom he had already 
had sharp conflicts, especially in perfecting the 
draft of the party program. Sasulich and Martof 
were the mediators in such cases: Sasulich as 
Plechanof’s second, Martof in the same position 
for Lenin. The two mediators were of a very 
forgiving nature and, besides, very friendly with 
each other. I only learned gradually of the sharp 
clashes between Lenin and Plechanof in the 
management of the theoretical part of the pro- 
gram. J remember that Vladimir Ilyich asked 
me what I thought of the program that had just 
appeared in “Iskra,” in Number 25, I believe. I 
had, however, taken in the program too much as 
a whole to be able to answer the internal questions 
that interested Lenin. The differences of opinion 
concerned the policy of greater sharpness and ex- 
actitude in characterizing the chief tendencies of 
capitalism, the concentration of production, the 
disintegration of the intermediate ranks, the class 
differences, etc——on Lenin’s side, and on greater 
consideration of conditions and caution on the part 
of Plechanof. 

The program, as is well known, abounds in the 
words “more or less’: that is due to Plechanof. 
As far as I remember Martof’s and Sasulich’s 
accounts, Lenin’s original draft, which he of- 
fered in contrast with Plechanof’s, met with very 


Baeial 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


sharp criticism on the part of the latter, in that 
haughty ironical tone that marked George Valen- 
tinovich in such cases. But Lenin was naturally 
neither intimidated nor discouraged by that. The 
struggle assumed a very dramatic form. 

Vera Ivanovna said to Lenin, as she told the 
story: ‘George (Plechanof) is a greyhound. He 
shakes and shakes the adversary and lets him go, 
but you are a bulldog: you have a deadly bite.” 

I remember this sentence very exactly as also 
Sasulich’s final remark: “That pleased him 
(Lenin) greatly. “The deadly bite?’ he repeated 
with delight.” And Vera Ivanovna imitated 
good-naturedly the tone of the question. 

During my stay in London Plechanof came for 
a short visit. I saw him then for the first time. 
He came to our common lodgings, was in the 
“den,” too, but I was not at home. 

‘George has arrived,” said Vera Ivanovna. “He 
wants to see you. Go to him.” 

“What George is thatr” I asked in surprise, 
for I took for granted it was a famous name that 
I did not know. 

“Plechanof .. . we call him George.” 

I went to him that evening. In the little room, 
besides Plechanof, sat the fairly well-known Ger- 
man writer and Social Democrat, Bar, and the 
Englishman Askew. As there were no more 


[ 16 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


chairs I did not know where I ought to sit down 
and Plechanof suggested—not without hesitation 
—that I sit on the bed. I found this quite natural, 
and had no idea that a European from head to toe 
like Plechanof resorted to such an _ unusual 
measure only in extreme necessity. The conversa- 
tion was in German which Plechanof knew but 
slightly; so he limited himself to very short re- 
marks. Bar spoke first of how the English 
bourgeoisie had understood how to ensnare the 
progressive workmen and then the conversation 
changed to the English forerunners of French 
materialism. Bar and Askew soon went away. 
George Valentinovich expected, and with reason, 
that I would go with them, as it was late, and in 
order not to disturb the landlady by talking. But 
I, on the contrary, was of the opinion that it was 
only really beginning now. 

“Bar said some very interesting things,” I said. 

“Yes, what he said about English politics is 
interesting, but what he said about philosophy is 
nonsense,” Plechanof answered. 

When he saw that I made no preparations to go 
he suggested that we go to drink beer in the neigh- 
borhood. He asked me some casual questions and 
was gracious, but back of this graciousness was a 
tinge of hidden impatience. I felt that he was 
absent-minded. Possibly he was only tired from 


[17] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


his day, but I went away with a dissatisfied and 
irritated feeling. 

In the London period, as in Geneva later, I met 
Sasulich and Martof more frequently than Lenin. 
In London I lived in the same house with them, 
and in Geneva we generally ate dinner and supper 
in the same restaurant, so that I met Martof and 
Sasulich several times a day, while every encounter 
with Lenin, who lived with his family, with the 
exception of official meetings, was a little event. 

Sasulich was a curious person and a curiously 
attractive one. She wrote very slowly and suffered 
actual tortures of creation. “Vera Ivanovna does 
not write, she puts mosaic together,’ Vladimir 
Ilyich said to me at that time. And in fact she put 
down each sentence separately, walked up and 
down the room slowly, shuffled about in her 
slippers, smoked constantly hand-made cigarettes 
and threw the stubs and half-smoked cigarettes in 
every direction on all the window seats and tables, 
and scattered ashes over her jacket, hands, manu- 
scripts, tea in the glass, and incidentally her visitor. 
She remained to the end the old radical intel- 
lectual on whom fate grafted Marxism. Sasulich’s 
articles show that she had adopted to a remarkable 
degree the theoretic elements of Marxism. But 
the moral political foundations of the Russian 
radicals of the ’7o0’s remained untouched in her 


[18 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


until her death. In intimate conversations she 
permitted herself to rail against recognized 
methods or deductions of Marxism. ‘The idea 
“revolutionary” had for her an independent mean- 
ing, apart from its class purport. I recall a con- 
versation with her about her ‘Revolutionaries 
from a Bourgeois Milieu.” I used the expression 
bourgeois democratic revolutionaries. “But no,” 
Vera Ivanovna interrupted with a touch of annoy- 
ance or rather of vexation. ‘Not bourgeois and 
not proletarian, but simply revolutionary. Natu- 
rally one can say small bourgeois revolutionaries,” 
she added, if you attribute to the small bourgeoisie 
everything you cannot otherwise dispose of. . . .” 

The ideological rallying-point of Social De- 
mocracy was then Germany and we followed with 
close attention the struggle of the orthodox with 
the revisionists in German Social Democracy. 
Vera Ivanovna did not do this, she even said: 
“Tt is always the same. They will also finish with 
revision, will restore Marx, obtain the majority 
and still get along with the Kaiser.” 

“Whom do you mean by ‘they,’ Vera Ivanovna?P” 

“The German Social Democrats.” 

In this connection Vera Ivanovna was not so 
wrong as it then seemed, even though everything 
took a different course and for different reasons 
than she thought... . Sasulich looked with 


[19 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


skepticism at the program of the division of land; 
she did not turn it aside but she joked good- 
naturedly about it. I recall an episode of this 
kind. Shortly before the Congress Constantin 
Constantinovich Bauer came to Geneva. He was 
an old Marxist but an extremely unbalanced and 
changeable man who was friendly with Struve for 
a time and then hesitated between the “Iskra”’ and 
“Osvobochdenje” + (Liberation). In Geneva he 
began to turn towards the “Iskra” but he did not 
want to recognize the division of land. He went 
to Lenin, with whom he had evidently been ac- 
quainted in the past. He came away from him 
without having been convinced, no doubt because 
Vladimir Ilyich, who knew his Hamlet nature, 
had not taken the trouble to convince him. I hada 
long conversation with Bauer, whom I had known 
in exile, about the unlucky divisions of land. In 
the sweat of my brow I set forth all the arguments 
I had gathered together in six months of endless 
debates with Social Revolutionaries and all the 
other adversaries of the agrarian program of 
“Tskra.” And actually, the evening of that very 
day, Martof (at least I believe it was he) told us 
at an editorial meeting at which I was present, 

*The organ of “The Union of Liberation” to which Miluikof, 
Struve, and Propokovich belonged, who “first stood with one foot m 
the camp of Social Democracy and with the other in the camp of the 


Liberals.” Sinovief: “History of the Communist Party,” page 7o— 
Translator. 
[ 20 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


that Bauer had come to him and had finally de- 
clared himself an “Iskraer.’ Trotzky had 
scattered all his doubts... . 

“About the divisions too?” Sasulich asked 
frightened. 

“Yes, especially that.” 

“The p-o-or fellow,” Ivanovna exclaimed with 
such an inimitable expression that we all laughed 
in a friendly way. 

“Tn Vera Ivanovna much is based on ethics and 
feeling,” Lenin once said to me, and told me how 
she and Martof had been inclined to individual 
terror on account of the flogging by Wal, the gov- 
ernor of Vilna, of workmen who were making a 
demonstration. The traces of this temporary 
“tendency,” as we then called it, can be found in 
one of the numbers of “Iskra.” It seems to me the 
matter stands thus: Martof and Sasulich pub- 
lished the number in question without Lenin who 
was on the continent. The news of the floggings 
in Vilna reached London through a telegraph 
agency. In Vera Ivanovna there awoke the heroic 
radical who had shot at Trepof on account of the 
scourging of political prisoners. Martof sup- 
ported her. When Lenin received the new num- 
ber of “Iskra” he was greatly excited: ‘That is 
the first step towards capitulation to the social 
revolutionary doctrine.” At the same time there 


[21 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


came a letter of protest from Plechanof. ‘This 
episode had occurred before my arrival in London 
and so my description may contain a few in- 
accuracies about the course of events but [ 
remember very well the essence of the affair. 
“Naturally,” Vera Ivanovna declared in a con- 
versation with me, “‘it is not a question here of the 
terror, but of the system, and I believe that one 
can wean them away from scourging by the 
terrors 

Sasulich could not carry on a real discussion, 
still less did she understand how to come forward 
openly. She never answered directly the argu- 
ments of her opponents, but pondered over them 
quietly until finally she burst forth in a whole train 
of sentences in which she turned, not to the one 
whom the reply concerned, but to the one she 
thought would understand her. When the debates 
were formal, with a president, Vera Ivanovna 
never entered the list of speakers, as, to say any- 
thing, she would have had to burst forth explo- 
sively. In such a case, she entirely ignored the 
list of speakers, treated them with absolute dis- 
respect, interrupted constantly the speaker and 
the president, and said to the very end what she 
wanted to say. To understand her you had to 
follow her train of thought closely. And her 
thoughts were—whether they were false or right 


[ 22 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


—always interesting and exclusively her own. It 
is not difficult to imagine what a contrast, Vera 
Ivanovna, with her indefinite radicalism, her sub- 
jectivity, and her confusion presented to Vladimir 
Ilyich. Not only was there no sympathy between 
them but they had the feeling of deep organic 
difference. But as a clever psychologist Sasulich 
felt Lenin’s force, perhaps also not without a touch 
of envy. She showed this also in her expression 
about the deadly bite. 

The complicated relations that existed among 
the members of the staff were gradually made clear 
to me, but not without some difficulty. As I have 
already said I came to London a real provincial. 
This was true in every respect; at that time I had 
not only not been abroad, but had not been in 
Petersburg. In Moscow as well as in Kief I had 
only been in political prisons. The Marxist 
publicists J knew exclusively from their articles. 
In Siberia I had read a few numbers of “Iskra” 
and Lenin’s “What Is to Be Doner” I had heard 
obscurely of Ilin, the author of ‘““The Development 
of Capitalism” in the Moscow prison (I believe 
from Vanovsky) as the rising star of Social 
Democracy. I knew little of Martof, nothing of 
Potresof. In London I studied with zeal “Iskra”’ 
and “Saria” and especially what had happened 
abroad, and thus in one of the numbers of “Saria”’ 


[ 23 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


I came upon a brilliant article aimed at Propo- 
kovich about the role and the meaning of the 
mining-companies unions. 

“Who is this Molotof?” I asked Martof. 

“Parvus.”’ 

But I knew nothing of Parvus. I accepted 
“Tskra” as a whole and in those months I had no 
desire, indeed I had even a kind of inner aversion, 
to look in it or its staff for any weakening tend- 
encies, shades of feeling, influences, or similar 
things. 

I recall that I noticed that many editorials and 
feuilletons in “Iskra” although not signed, con- 
tained the pronoun “I’’: “In such and such a 
number [I said,” “I have already written such and 
such a thing,” etc. I asked who wrote these 
articles. It turned out that they were all by 
Lenin. In talking with him I remarked that I 
thought it wrong to use the pronoun “I” in un- 
signed articles. “Why wronger” he asked in- 
terestedly, assuming that I was saying something 
here that was not casual and not only my personal 
opinion. 

“Because it is,” I answered vaguely, for I had 
no particular views about it. 

“Y don’t think so,” said Lenin and laughed am- 
biguously. 

At that time one might have perceived a breath 


[ 24 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


of “egotism” in this literary custom. In fact, 
however, the prominence given his articles, even 
when they were not signed, gives a strong position 
to his policy because of his mistrust of the firm 
policy of his nearest colleagues. Here we see al- 
ready on a small scale that persistent, stubborn 
directness of purpose, that made use of all cir- 
cumstances, stopped at no formality, and was the 
characteristic of Lenin as a leader. 

Lenin was the political guide of “Iskra” but 
as a publicist Martof was its head. He wrote 
easily and unceasingly, exactly as he spoke. Lenin 
passed much time in the library of the British 
Museum, where he was busy with theoretical 
studies. J remember that Lenin wrote an article 
in the library against Nadjeschdin, who at that 
time had his own little publication in Switzerland, 
and chanced to be hesitating between the Social 
Democrats and the Social Revolutionaries. But 
the night before (he usually worked at night), 
Martof had already written a long article about 
Nadjeschdin and given it to Lenin. 

“Fave you read Julian’s article?” Vladimir 
Ilyich asked me in the Museum. 

 Yesvalo have read it.’ 

“What do you think of itr” 

“T think it is good.” 

“Yes, it is very good, but not definite enough. 


[25] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


The results are lacking. Here I have written out 
something, but I do not know yet what ought to be 
done with it; perhaps add it to Julian’s article as 
a supplementary note.” 

He gave me a small sheet of paper written 
closely with pencil, and in the next number of 
“Tskra” Martof’s article appeared with Lenin’s 
note added. I do not know if this note is used in 
the collected works of Lenin. But I can vouch 
that he wrote it. 

Some months later, it was in the weeks before 
the Congress, a new difference of opinion flared 
up in passing between Lenin and Martof and that 
about a tactical question in connection with the 
street demonstrations, that is, to be more exact, 
about the armed struggle with the police. Lenin 
said we must form small armed groups and in- 
struct the workmen accustomed to fight to struggle 
with the police. Martof was against it. The 
strike reached the editorial office. 

‘“Won’t this cause something like a group 
terror’ I said in regard to Lenin’s proposal. (I 
remember that at this time the struggle with the 
terrorist tactics of the Social Revolutionaries 
played a large role in our work.) Martof took 
up the discussion and developed the idea that we 
must give instructions to protect the mass 
demonstrations from the police, but without train- 


[ 26 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


ing separate groups to struggle with them. Plech- 
anof, to whom the others and I looked expectantly, 
avoided the answer and suggested to Martof to put 
the resolution in writing so that we could consider 
the points of controversy with the text in hand. 
The episode, however, was swallowed up in the 
events connected with the Congress. 

Not only in assemblies and meetings, but in 
private conversations, I had very little opportunity 
to observe Lenin and Martof together. Long dis- 
cussions, formless conversations, which generally 
changed to exiles’ chat and disputes, to which 
Martof was much inclined, Lenin did not care for 
at all. ‘This most powerful machinist of the 
revolution, not only in politics but also in his 
theoretical works, in his philosophical and lin- 
guistic studies, was irrevocably controlled by one 
and the same idea, the goal. He was probably the 
most extreme utilitarian whom the laboratory of 
history has produced. But his utilitarianism was 
of the broadest historical scope. His personality 
did not grow flat or poor thereby, but on the 
contrary developed and enriched itself in extent, 
as his experience of life and sphere of activity 
STOW as 

Side by side with Lenin, Martof, who was then 
his closest comrade in the struggle, did not feel 
very comfortable. They still used the familiar 


[ 27 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


“thou” but there was already a certain coolness 
noticeable in their relations. Martof lived far 
more for today, and its concerns, for the current 
literary work, publicist writings, polemics, for 
news and conversation. Lenin left today behind 
him and forced himself into tomorrow in his 
thoughts. Martof had numberless and often bril- 
liant combinations, hypotheses, propositions, which 
he himself quickly forgot, while Lenin found what 
he needed and when he needed it. The venture- 
someness and brittleness of Martof’s thoughts made 
Lenin frequently shake his head in alarm. Any 
differences in the political policy were not yet 
fixed, and had not yet made their appearance; 
only subsequently they could be detected by in- 
timations. 

Later at the time of the split at the Second Con- 
gress the “Iskra’”’ people were divided into hard 
and soft. ‘This designation was naturally very use- 
ful at first, and demonstrates that when there was 
no exact line of division, the difference lay in com- 
prehension, resolution, and readiness to go to the 
end. When we turn to the relations between Lenin 
and Martof it must be said that, before the split 
and before the Congress, Lenin was “hard” and 
Martof “soft.” And both knew this. Lenin 
looked critically and almost mistrustfully at Mar- 
tof, whom otherwise he valued very highly, and 


[ 28 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


Martof, who was conscious of that, felt oppressed 
and nervously shrugged his thin shoulders. When 
they talked with each other on meeting, the lack of 
the friendly tone and of any joking was noticeable, 
at least as far as I could see. When Lenin spoke he 
looked past Martof, and Martof’s eyes on the 
other hand looked out rigidly from behind the 
drooping glasses that were never cleaned. Even 
when Vladimir Ilyich spoke with me about Mar- 
tof his voice had a peculiar tinge: ‘Did Julian 
say that?” in which he laid special stress on the 
name, slightly emphasized and at the same time 
warning: “Fine and good, even noteworthy, but 
very weak.”’ Martof was doubtless also influenced 
by Vera Ivanovna, who forced him away from 
Lenin, not politically to be sure, but psycho- 
logically. Naturally all this is more of a general 
psychological characterization than data material, 
and it is in addition a characterization that is made 
twenty-one years later. Since this time my memory 
has been much burdened and in the presentation 
of imponderable motives in the sphere of personal 
relations, mistakes as well as changes in perspective 
may indeed be mingled. What is here recollection 
and what unconscious supplementary reconstruc- 
tionr I believe, however, that my memory brings 
back to me that which then was, and as it was. 
After my so-called “trial appearance” in White- 


[ 29 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


chapel, which Alexief reported to the staff, I was 
sent with an official report to the continent—to 
Brussels, Liittich, Paris. The theme was: ‘What 
is historical materialism and how do the Social 
Revolutionaries comprehend it?” Vladimir 
Ilyich was very much interested in this theme. 
I gave him a full draft of it with quotations, 
etc., to look through. He advised me to work up 
the report into an article for the next number of 
‘‘Saria,” but I did not attempt it. 

From Paris a telegram soon called me back to 
London. They were considering sending me to 
Russia illegally. Vladimir Ilyich’s train of 
thought was: complaints came from there about 
the break-up of the organization, the lack of 
people, and, I believe, Claire had demanded my 
return. But I had not yet reached London when 
the plan was abandoned. L. G. Deutsch, who 
then lived in London and was very friendly with 
me, told me subsequently how he had “stood up” 
for me by pointing out that the “youth”—he never 
called me anything else—ought to live and study: 
abroad for some time yet, and that, after some 
discussion, Lenin agreed with him. It would have 
been very interesting to work in the Russian or- 
ganization of “Iskra,” but nevertheless I was glad 
to remain abroad for some time. 

One Sunday I went with Vladimir Ilyich and 


[ 30 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA’”’ 


Nadezda Constantinovna to a London Socialist 
Church, where a Social Democratic meeting al- 
ternated with the singing of God-fearing, revolu- 
tionary psalms. ‘The speaker was, I think, a 
printer, who had come back to his home from 
Australia. Vladimir translated his speech for us 
in a whisper, a speech that sounded quite revolu- 
tionary for that period at least. Then everybody 
stood up and sang: “Almighty God, put an end 
to kings and rich men . . .” or something similar. 
“Among the English proletariat there are many 
revolutionary and socialist elements,” said Vladi- 
mir Ilyich, as we left the church, “but it is all so 
intertwined with conservatism, religion, and prej- 
udices, that it cannot reach the surface and be- 
come the property of all... .” It is not without 
interest to state here that Sasulich and Martof 
lived quite apart from the English workingmen’s 
activity and were completely absorbed in the 
“Tskra” and what surrounded it. Lenin occasion- 
ally made independent excursions in the field of 
the English workingmen’s activity. 

It remains to be said that Vladimir Ilyich and 
Nadezda Constantinovna and her mother lived 
more than simply. On our return from the Social 
Democratic church we ate together in the little 
kitchen of their two-room dwelling. I remember 
as though it were yesterday the roast meat served 


Per 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


in a casserole. Then we drank tea and joked as 
usual as to whether I could find my way home 
alone; it was difficult for me to find my way in 
the streets, and as I was inclined to systematize I 
called this peculiarity “topographical cretinism.” 
The date of the Congress approached and finally it 
was decided to transfer the headquarters of “Iskra”’ 
to Switzerland, to Geneva; living there was much 
cheaper and the connection with Russia easier. 
Lenin concealed his annoyance and agreed. I was 
sent to Paris in order to go to Geneva with Martof. 
The preparatory work for the Congress went on 
with more vigor. 

A short time after that Lenin came to Paris, too. 
He was to give three lectures on the agrarian ques- 
tion in the so-called Russian High School that had 
been organized in Paris by exiled Russian uni- 
versity professors. After Tchernof had appeared 
in the school the Marxist section of the student 
body had insisted on the invitation to Lenin. The 
professors were alarmed and begged the lecturer, 
if possible, not to venture into polemics. But Lenin 
made no binding promises and opened the first 
lecture thus: that Marxism is a revolutionary and 
consequently, in its essence, a polemical theory, 
but that this polemical nature in no way con- 
tradicts its scientific character. I recall that 
Vladimir Ilyich was much excited before his first 


[32] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


lecture. At the speaker’s desk, however, he con- 
trolled himself at once, at least outwardly. Pro- 
fessor Gambarof, who had come to hear him, for- 
mulated his impression to Deutsch as follows: “A 
true professor!” ‘The delightful man thought he 
was praising him highly. 

Although polemical through and through— 
against the Narodniki and the social agrarian re- 
former David, whom Lenin compared and con- 
nected—the lectures proceeded in the framework 
of economic theory and left untouched the political 
struggle of the moment, the agrarian program of 
Social Democracy, of the Social Revolutionaries, 
etc. This limitation was imposed upon the 
lecturer on account of the academic character of 
the chair. But at the end of the third lecture 
Lenin gave a political report on the agrarian 
question. I think it was at Rue Choisy 110, ar- 
ranged by the Paris group of “Iskra,” and no 
longer by the High School. The hall was 
crowded. The whole student body of the High 
School had come to hear the practical conse- 
quences of the theoretical lectures. The speech 
dealt with the agrarian program of “Iskra” at the 
time and particularly the indemnity for the divi- 
sion of land. I no longer remember who opposed 
it, but I do remember that Vladimir Ilyich was 
splendid in his concluding words. One of the 


[ 33 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


Parisian “Iskra” people said to me on leaving: 
‘“Tenin surpassed himself to-day.” 

Afterwards the “Iskra” people went with the 
speaker to a café. All were very gratified and the 
lecturer himself in a happy mood. The cashier 
of the group told us of the entrance receipts that 
the meeting had brought to the ‘‘Iskra”’ cash box,— 
evidently between 75 and 100 francs; a sum not 
to be despised. 

This all happened in the beginning of 1903; 
for the moment I cannot tell the date more ac- 
curately, but I think it would not be hard to do 
so, if it has not been done already. 

During this visit of Lenin it was decided to 
take him to the opera. N. I. Sedovaja, a member 
of the “Iskra”’ staff, was appointed to arrange the 
affair. Vladimir Ilyich came to the theater—it 
was the Opera Comique—and left the theater 
with the same map that had taken him to his 
lecture at the High School. The opera was 
“Louise” by Massenet,’ and its subject is very 
democratic. We sat in a group in the gallery. 
Besides Lenin, Sedovaja, and myself, Martof was 
there; the others I no longer remember. There is 
a little circumstance, quite unmusical, connected 
with this visit to the opera, that has made a deep 
impression on me. Lenin had bought himself 


*Trotzky here confuses Massenet with Charpentier—Translator. 


[ 34 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


boots in Paris. They proved to be too narrow. 
He worried himself over them a few hours until 
he decided to take them off. As ill-luck would 
have it, my shoes left much to be desired. I re- 
ceived these boots, and in my delight they seemed 
to fit splendidly at first. I wanted to initiate them 
on our visit to the opera. The walk there passed 
off happily. But in the theater I felt that things 
were not going well. Probably that is the reason 
I no longer remember what impression the opera 
made on Lenin and myself. I only know that he 
was roused up, joked and laughed. On the way 
home I suffered terribly and Vladimir Ilyich 
teased me unmercifully the whole time. Back of 
his joking, however, there was real fellow-feeling: 
he had himself suffered some hours of torture in 
these boots, as I have said. 

I mentioned above Lenin’s excitement before 
his Paris lectures. I must dwell on this. This 
kind of excitement showed itself in him also much 
later, and in a stronger form the less the audience 
was “his,” the more formal the occasion of the 
meeting. Outwardly Lenin always spoke con- 
vincingly, impetuously and quickly, so that his 
speeches were a bitter affliction for the stenog- 
raphers. But when he did not feel in his element 
his voice sounded somewhat strange, impersonal, 
and resounded like an echo. When, on the con- 


[35] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


trary, Lenin detected that this very audience 
needed what he had to say, his voice became very 
animated and softly convincing, without becoming 
“oratorical” in the real sense of the word, rather 
kept up a conversational tone, on a platform scale. 
This was not rhetorical art, but something greater 
than oratory. You can naturally say that every 
orator speaks best before “his own” audience. In 
this general form that is of course right. But the 
question is what audience the orator feels to be 
his and under what circumstances. The European 
orators of the type of Vanderveld, who are trained 
by parliamentary models, need ceremonious sur- 
roundings and formal occasions for pathos. At 
jubilee gatherings and on gala occasions they feel 
in their element. For Lenin any meeting of this 
kind was a little personal misfortune. He was at 
his best and most convincing always over matters 
of controversy. The best examples of his public 
appearances are probably his speeches in the 
Central Committee before October. 

Before the Paris reports I had heard Lenin only 
once, I think, in London, about the end of Decem- 
ber, 1902. Strange to say, I have not the slightest 
recollection of it, neither the reason for his appear- 
ance nor the theme. I almost doubt if there really 
was areport by him. But apparently it happened 
thus: the occasion was, under the conditions in 


[ 36 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


London, a large Russian gathering, and Lenin 
was present; if he did not have to make a report 
he scarcely ever appeared. I show the deficiencies 
in my memory by saying that his report probably 
treated as usual the same theme that was in the 
current number of “Iskra.” I had already read 
Lenin’s article and so the report contained nothing 
new for me. There was no discussion; the weak 
London opponents could not make up their minds 
to come out against Lenin. The audience, which 
consisted in part of unionists, and in part of an- 
archists, was not a very grateful one—consequently 
it was a tame affair. I only remember that to- 
wards the end of the meeting, the B.’s, husband 
and wife, of the former Petersburg group of the 
“Rabotschaja Mysl” (Workman’s Thought), who 
had lived in London for some time, came to me 
and gave me the invitation: “Come to us on New 
Year’s Eve” (that is why I remember that the 
meeting took place the end of December). 

“What for?’ I asked in barbaric narrow- 
mindedness. 

“To pass the time in a circle of comrades. 
Ulianof will be there and Krupskaja.” 

I know that she said Ulianof and not Lenin, and 
that I did not understand at once whom they were 
talking about. Sasulich and Martof were invited, 
too. The next day we talked about it in the “den” 


Panu 


LENIN AND THE OLD “‘ISKRA”’ 


and asked Lenin if he were going. I think no one 
went. It is a pity: it would have been the one 
occasion of its kind to have seen Lenin with Sasu- 
lich and Martof in the setting of New Year’s Eve. 

Before my departure for Geneva from Paris I 
was invited to Plechanof’s with Sasulich and Mar- 
tof. I think Vladimir Ilyich was there too. But 
I have only a very dim recollection of that evening. 
In any event it did not have a political character, 
but a “worldly” one, if not a bourgeois one. I 
remember that I sat there helpless and depressed, 
and if the host or hostess did not show me any 
special attention, did not know what to do. 
Plechanof’s daughters passed tea and cakes. There 
was a certain tenseness among us all, and evidently 
I was not the only one who did not feel at ease. 
Perhaps it was due to my youth that I felt the 
coolness more than the others. This visit was my 
first and last. My impressions of this “visit” were 
very fleeting and probably purely accidental, as in 
general all my meetings with Plechanof were 
fleeting and accidental. The brilliant figure of 
Russia’s Marxist old master I have tried to char- 
acterize briefly elsewhere. Here I limit myself to 
the scrappy impressions of the first meetings in 
which I had no luck at all. Sasulich, who was 
much distressed at such things, said to me: “I 
know, George can be unbearable, but in reality he 


[ 38 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


is an awfully dear beast.” (A favorite eulogy of 
hers.) 

I must remark here, that in contrast to this, in 
Axelrod’s family there was always an atmosphere 
of simplicity and sincere comrade-like sympathy. 
I still remember gratefully the hours I spent at 
Axelrod’s hospitable table during my frequent 
visits in Zurich. Vladimir Ilyich, too, spent much 
time here and, so far as I know from what the 
family told me, he felt much at home in their 
midst. I did not happen to meet him at Axelrod’s. 

As far as Sasulich is concerned her frankness 
and goodness to the young comrades is quite 
unique. If you cannot speak of hospitality in her 
in the real sense of the word, it is only because she 
herself had more need of it than she was able to 
show. She lodged, dressed, and supported her- 
self like the simplest of students. Of material 
things her chief joys were tobacco and mustard. 
The one as well as the other she consumed in large 
quantities. When she put a thick layer of mustard 
on a very thin slice of ham we said: “Vera Ivan- 
Ovna is extravagant... .” 

The fourth member of the “Group for Libera- 
tion of Labor,” L. G. Deutsch, was very kind and 
attentive to the young comrades. I do not re- 
member, however, that as the administrator of 
“Iskra” he ever took part as an advisor at the 


[ 39 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


meetings of the staff. Deutsch generally went 
about with Plechanof and had more than moderate 
views on questions of revolutionary tactics. Once 
he said, to my great astonishment: “It will never 
come to an armed uprising, my boy, and it is not 
necessary. We had fighting-cocks in our prison 
who started fighting at the slightest provocation 
and so perished. I have, on the contrary, always 
taken the stand: not to give in and to let the ad- 
ministration understand that it will come to a big 
fight, but not to allow it to come to that. I gained 
thereby the respect of the administration and—a 
modification of the régime. We must use the 
same kind of tactics to Czarism, otherwise it will 
fight and destroy us without any benefit to the 
cause.” 

I was so surprised by this tactical speech that 
I told it in turn to Martof, Sasulich, and Lenin. I 
no longer remember how Martof reacted. Vera 
Ivanovna said: “Eugene (Deutsch’s old nick- 
name) was always like that: personally an ex- 
ceptionally brave man, but politically extremely 
prudent and restrained.’”” When Lenin heard it 
he said something like: “Hm,hm.. . yes, yes,” 
and then we both laughed without any further 
comment. 

In Geneva the first delegates for the coming 
Second Congress arrived, and there were sessions 


[ 40 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


with them constantly. In this preparatory work 
- Lenin unquestionably played the leading role, al- 
though not always perceptibly. Meetings of 
“Tskra’s’ editorial staff, meetings of ‘“Iskra’s”’ 
organization, separate meetings with delegates, in 
groups and together, alternated with each other. 
A number of the delegates came with doubts, with 
objections, or with demands of definite groups. 
The preparatory work took up much time. At the 
Congress there were three workmen present. 
Lenin talked with each of them very definitely and 
won all three. One of them was Schotman 
from Petersburg. He was still very young but 
cautious and deliberate. I remember how he came 
back after his conversation with Lenin (we were 
in the same lodgings) and constantly repeated: 
“And how his eyes glitter; he looks right through 
one....’ The delegate from Nicolaief was 
Kalafati. Vladimir Ilyich questioned me in de- 
tail about him—I knew him in Nicolaief—and 
then he added, with a sly smile: ‘He says he has 
known you as a kind of Tolstoian.” 

“What nonsense that is!” I said almost 
angrily. 

‘What is the matter?’ Lenin replied, half to 
calm me, half to tease me. “You were then 
probably eighteen years old, and men are cer- 
tainly not born Marxists.” 


[ 41 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


“That may be,” I said, “but I had nothing in 
common with Tolstoianism.” 

A main point in the deliberations was the 
statute whereby, in the organization schemes and 
discussions, the correlations between the central 
organ and the Central Committee formed one of 
the most important points. I had come abroad 
with the idea that the central organ must “‘sub- 
ordinate” itself to the Central Committee. That 
was also the attitude of the majority of the Rus- 
sian ‘‘Iskra’’? people—to be sure without being very 
emphatic and definite. 

“That won’t do,” Vladimir Ilyich replied; “that 
is contrary to the relative strength. How can they 
direct us from Russia? It won’t do. ... We are 
the stable center and shall direct from here.” 

In one of the drafts it reads that the central 
organ was under the obligation of bringing out the 
articles of the members of the Central Committee. 

“Also those against the central organ’ Lenin 
asked. 

“Naturally.” 

“What is that for? It leads to nothing. A 
polemic between two members of the central organ 
may be useful under certain conditions, but a 
polemic of ‘Russian’ members of the Central 
Committee against the central organ is inad- 
missible.”’ 


[ 42 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


“But that means complete dictatorship of the 
central organ?” I asked. 

“What is there bad about that?” Lenin 
answered. “In the present situation it cannot be 
otherwise.” 

There was much friction at that time about the 
so-called right of extension. At one of the con- 
ferences we, the young people, led the discussion 
to positive and negative extension. 

“Yes, negative extension; that means in Russian 
‘cast out,’ Vladimir Ilyich said laughingly to 
me the next morning. “That is not so simple! 
Just try for once—ha, ha, ha,—to put through 
negative extension in the staff of the ‘Iskra.’ ” 

The most important question for Lenin was the 
future organization of the central organ, which in 
reality had to play the role of the Central Com- 
mittee at the same time. Lenin considered it im- 
possible to retain the old committee of six any 
longer. Sasulich and Martof were almost in- 
variably on the side of Plechanof in any matter of 
dispute, so that, at best, it meant three against 
three. Neither one nor the other team of three 
wanted to dispense with any one of the commission. 
There remained the opposite course: the enlarge- 
ment of the commission. Lenin wanted to in- 
troduce me as the seventh, in order to separate 
from the commission of seven, as also from the 


[ 43 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


enlarged staff, a closer staff group consisting of 
Lenin, Plechanof, and Martof. Vladimir Ilyich 
gradually initiated me in this plan without 
mentioning at all that he had already proposed 
me as the seventh member of the staff, and that 
this motion had been accepted by all, with the 
exception of Plechanof, who decidedly opposed 
it. The entrance of a seventh, in Plechanof’s eyes, 
meant in itself a majority of the group “Liberation 
of Labor”: four “young” against three ‘‘old” men. 

I believe this plan was the main source of the 
extreme malevolence that George Valentinovich 
showed me. Unfortunately there were also smaller 
open clashes between us in the presence of the 
delegates. I think it began with the question of 
the popular newspaper. Some delegates em- 
phasized the necessity of publishing a popular 
organ at the same time as “Iskra,” if possible in 
Russia. ‘This was particularly the idea of the 
group “Juschni Rabotschi” (workmen of the 
south). Lenin was a decided opponent. His de- 
liberations were of a varied nature, but the main 
reason was the fear that a special grouping might 
be formed on the basis of a ‘“‘popular” simplifica- 
tion of Social Democratic ideas, before the picked 
men of the party had settled themselves properly. 
Plechanof stood decidedly for the creation of a 
popular organ, opposed Lenin openly, and sought 


L 44 J 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


the support of the local delegates. I supported 
Lenin. At one of the sessions I developed the 
idea—if it were right or not is a matter of in- 
difference to me now—that we did not need a 
popular organ, but a series of propagandist pam- 
phlets and handbills that should assist in raising 
the progressive workman to the level of the 
“Iskra,” that moreover a popular organ would 
narrow the “Iskra” and blur the political physiog- 
nomy of the party while lowering it to the stand- 
ards of the Economists and Social Revolutionaries. 

Plechanof objected: ‘What do you mean by 
blur? Naturally we cannot say everything in a 
popular organ. We shall present challenges and 
solutions, but not occupy ourselves with questions 
of tactics. We say to the workman that we must 
fight with capitalism, but naturally we shall not 
theorize with him as to ‘how.’ ”’ 

I took up this argument: “But the ‘Economists’ 
and Social Revolutionaries too say that we must 
fight with capitalism. The divergence begins 
with that very point, how the struggle is to be 
carried on. If we do not answer this question in 
the popular organ we put aside the difference 
between us and the Social Revolutionaries. . . .” 

This reply had something very triumphant about 
it and Plechanof was embarrassed. This episode 
did not improve his relations with me. There 


[45 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


was a second conflict soon after this, at a staff 
meeting, that indeed passed the resolution to admit 
me to the councils until the Congress had decided 
‘on the composition of the editorial staff. Plech- 
anof opposed it categorically. But Vera Ivan- 
ovna said tohim: “But I shall bring him into it.” 
And she really “brought” me into the session. I 
myself learned of this act behind the scenes con- 
siderably later and went to the meeting without 
misgivings. George Valentinovich greeted me 
with that special coolness in which he so excelled. 
And unfortunately at this very session the staff had 
to consider a matter of dispute between Deutsch 
and the above-mentioned Blumenfeld. Deutsch 
was the administrator of the “Iskra.”’ Blumenfeld 
had charge of the printing. On this basis a ques- 
tion of jurisdiction arose. Blumenfeld complained 
about Deutsch’s interference in the affairs of the 
printing office. Plechanof supported Deutsch 
through old friendship and proposed that Blumen- 
feld limit himself to the. printing technique. I 
made the objection that it was impossible to con- 
duct the printing office only on a technical plane, 
as there were, in addition, organizing and ad- 
ministrative affairs to settle and that Blumenfeld 
must be independent in all these questions. I re- 
member Plechanof’s malicious reply: “If Com- 
rade Trotzky is right that the manifold 


[ 40 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD. “ISKRA”’ 


superstructure of an administrative and other 
nature develops from technique, as the theory of 
historical materialism teaches, then . . .” etc. 

Lenin and Martof, however, supported me dis- 
creetly and carried through the decision as needed. 
That was the finishing stroke. In both cases 
Vladimir Ilyich’s sympathy was on my side. At 
the same time he saw with alarm that my relations 
with Plechanof grew much worse, which threat- 
ened to spoil his plan for reorganizing the staff. 
At one of the next conferences with the newly ar- 
rived delegates Lenin took me to one side and 
said: “On this question of a popular organ you 
had better leave it to Martof to answer Plechanof. 
Martof will cement what you break. It is better 
for him to cement it.” ‘These expressions break 
and cement I remember exactly. 

After one of the staff meetings in the “Café 
Landolt,” I believe it was after the same meeting 
I have just mentioned, Sasulich began, in that 
timid impressive voice peculiar to her in such 
cases, to complain that we attacked the Liberals 
“too much.” ‘That was her sorest spot. 

“Look how you overexert yourselves,” she said 
and looked past Lenin, though she had him in 
mind above all. “In the last number of ‘Osvo- 
boschdenje,’ Struve presents Jaurés as an example 
to our Liberals and claims that the Russian 


[ 47 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


Liberals should not break with Socialism, because 
otherwise the lamentable fate of German Liberal- 
ism threatens them, but should take the French 
Radical Socialists as an example.” 

Lenin stood by the table. He had pushed back 
his soft hat high on his forehead; the meeting had 
ended and he was about to go. 

“So much the more must we attack them,” he 
said smiling contentedly and as if to tease Vera 
Ivanovna. 

“But look,” she cried in absolute despair, “they 
come to meet us and we strike at them!” 

“Yes, naturally, Struve says to his Liberals, ‘You 
must not use coarse German methods to our 
Socialism, but the finer French ones; you must 
coquette, attract, deceive and corrupt, in the style 
of the Left French Radicals, who are ogling 
Jaurésism.’ ” 

Naturally I cannot give this important speech 
word for word. Its meaning and substance, how- 
ever have been sharply impressed on my memory. 
I have not at the moment anything at hand to 
prove it, but it would not be difficult; one would 
have only to look over the early numbers of “‘Osvo- 
boschdenje” of 1903 for Struve’s article about the 
relation of the Liberals to Democratic Socialism 
in general and to Jaurésism in particular. I re- 
member this article on account of Vera Ivanovna’s 


[ 48 ] 


eee 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


words during the scene mentioned above. If you 
add to the date of appearance of the copy of 
“Osvoboschdenje” in question the time required 
for it to reach Geneva and Vera Ivanovna’s hands 
and be read by her, that is, three or four days, one 
can settle pretty closely the date of this dispute in 
Café Landolt. I recall that it was a spring day— 
perhaps already early summer—the sun was 
shining brightly and Lenin’s deep laugh was also 
bright. JI remember clearly his quietly ironical, 
confident and “sturdy” appearance, I say this in- 
tentionally, although Vladimir Ilyich was then 
more slender than in the last part of his life. Vera 
Ivanovna turned hastily from one to another, as 
she always did. But I believe no one interfered 
in the dispute, which took place as we were leaving 
and did not last long. 

I went home with her. Sasulich was depressed ; 
she felt that Struve’s card had failed. I could not 
give her any consolation. However, not one of us 
suspected then to what degree the card of Russian 
Liberalism had been beaten in this little dialogue 
by the door of Café Landolt. 


I perceive now the total inadequacy of the 
episodes I have told above: they are too pale. But 
I have carefully gathered everything my memory 


[ 49 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


had preserved at the beginning of this work, even 
what was of little importance, because there is 
almost no one left now, who could speak in more 
detail of this period. Plechanof isdead. Sasulich 
is dead. Martof is dead. And Lenin is dead. It 
is hardly possible that any one of them has left 
memoirs. Vera Ivanovna perhapse Nothing has 
been heard of them. Of “Iskra’s” former staff 
only Axelrod and Potresof are living. Without 
mentioning all other considerations, they both had 
but a small part in the editorial work and were 
rarely present at the staff meetings. Deutsch could 
tell some things, but he only came abroad shortly 
before the close of the period described, a short 
time before me, besides did not share in the edi- 
torial work immediately. Nadezda Constantin- 
ovna can, and, we hope, will give priceless infor- 
mation. She stood then in the very center of the 
entire work of organization, received the comrades 
arriving, gave instructions to and dismissed those 
departing, arranged connections, gave informa- 
tion, wrote letters, ciphered and deciphered. The 
odor of burnt paper was almost always noticeable 
in her room. She often complained in her gently 
energetic way that comrades over there wrote lit- 
tle, that they had confused the cipher, and that 
the lines written in chemical ink were very indis- 
tinct, etc. It is of still more importance that Na- 


[ 50 ] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “‘ISKRA”’ 


dezda Constantinovna, hand in hand with Lenin 
every day in this organizing work, could observe 
what went on in him and around him. None the 
less, I hope these pages will not be superfluous as, 
in my time, at least, Nadezda Constantinovna was 
rarely present at the staff meeting. But above all, 
the fresh eye of some one not immediately con- 
cerned now and then notices what the familiar eye 
no longer sees. Be that as it may, let that be told 
that I can tell. Now I will give some general 
opinions as to why, at the time of the “Iskra” a 
definite change in Lenin’s political self-conscious- 
ness had to take place, in his self-estimation, so to 
speak, why this change was inevitable, and how it 
was necessary. 

Lenin went abroad as a mature man of thirty. 
In Russia, in the student unions, in the first Social 
Democratic groups, in the colonies of exiles, he 
held the highest position. He could not but per- 
ceive his strength, already unique, for all with 
whom he came in contact and with whom he 
worked recognized it. He went abroad with much 
theoretical luggage, with an important political 
experience, and completely obsessed by the 
purpose of working for a definite goal which 
determined his intellectual nature. Abroad there 
awaited him work as a collaborator in the “Group 
for the Liberation of Labor,” especially with 


[st] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


Plechanof, the profound and brilliant commenta- 
tor of Marx, the teacher of entire generations, the 
theorist, politician, publicist, and orator of Euro- 
pean fame and European connections. At Plech- 
anof’s side stood two of the greatest authori- 
ties: Sasulich and Axelrod. It was not only her 
heroic past that had put Vera Ivanovna in the 
foreground, No, it was rather her keen intellect, 
with its comprehensive, historically inclined 
cultivation and its rare psychological intuition. 
In his time the “Group” was also connected with 
old Engels. In opposition to Plechanof and 
Sasulich, who above all were connected with 
Romanic Socialism, Axelrod represented in the 
“Group” the ideas and experiences of German 
Social Democracy. This difference in the 
“spheres of influence” was expressed also in their 
places of residence. Plechanof and Sasulich lived 
generally in Geneva, Axelrod in Zurich. Axelrod 
concentrated on questions of tactics. He has not 
written a single theoretical or historical book, as 
is well known. He wrote very little, and what he 
wrote almost always concerned tactical questions 
of Socialism. In this sphere Axelrod showed in- 
dependence and acuteness. From numerous con- 
versations with him—lI was very friendly with him 
and Sasulich for some time—I have a clear im- 
pression that much of what Plechanof has written 


[52] 





LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


on questions of tactics is a fruit of collective work, 
and that Axelrod’s part in it is considerably more 
important than one can prove from the printed 
documents alone. Axelrod said more than once to 
Plechanof, the undisputed and beloved leader of 
the “Group” (before the break in 1903): ‘George, 
you have a long snout, and take from everywhere 
what you need.” 

As is well known, Axelrod wrote the introduc- 
tion to Lenin’s manuscript sent from Russia, “The 
Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats.” By this 
act the “Group” adopted the talented young 
Russian party worker, but at the same time made 
it known that he was to be looked upon as a pupil. 
And so with this reputation Lenin and two other 
pupils arrived in a foreign land. I was not present 
at the first meetings of pupils and teachers, at those 
conferences where the policy of “Iskra’’ was 
worked out. Moreover, the observations of the 
half year described above and particularly of the 
Second Party Congress make it easy to understand 
that the reason for the extreme sharpness of the 
conflict, besides the question of principles just 
indicated, lay in the bad judgment of the old men 
in estimating lLenin’s development and _ sig- 
nificance. 

In the course of the Second Congress and im- 
mediately after it, Axelrod’s displeasure and that 


[53] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


of the other members of the staff at Lenin’s be- 
havior joined in the surprise: ‘How does he do 
it?” ‘This surprise increased when Lenin, after 
the break with Plechanof, who soon afterward 
entered the Congress, continued the fight none the 
less. Axelrod’s state of mind and that of the 
others can perhaps be best expressed in the words: 
“W hat kind of fly has stung him?” 

“Te only came abroad not a very long time 
ago,” the old man said; “he came as a pupil and 
his behavior was what was expected.’ (Axelrod 
emphasized this above all in his descriptions of 
the first months of the “Iskra.”’) Whence this 
sudden self-confidence? How does he do itr” etc. 

The conclusion was: he prepared the ground in 
advance in Russia. Not in vain were all the con- 
nections in Nadezda Constantinovna’s hands; 
there too the work of the Russian comrades 
against the “Group for the Liberation of Labor” 
went on quietly. Sasulich was indeed not less 
indignant than the others, but perhaps she under- 
stood more than the others. Not in vain had she 
said to Lenin, long before the split, in contrast 
with Plechanof that he had “a deadly bite.” And 
who knows what effect these words had upon him? 
Whether Lenin did not repeat to himself: “Yes, 
that is right: who, if not Sasulich, can know 
Plechanof? He shakes and shakes his opponent, 


[ 54] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “JSKRA” 


and lets him go, while our task demands something 
quite different. . . . Here it requires the deadly 
bite.” 

To what degree and in what sense the words 
about a preparatory “work” of the Russian com- 
rades are right, Nadezda Constantinovna can best 
tell. But in the broader sense of the word one 
can say without further examination of the facts, 
that such a preparation took place. Lenin always 
prepared the day to follow while he affirmed and 
improved today. Hiscreative mind never stiffened 
and his vigilance never tired. And when he came 
to the conclusion that the “Group for Liberation 
of Labor,” because of the approaching revolution, 
was not in a position to assume the immediate 
direction of the organization for the struggle of 
the proletarian vanguard, he drew for himself all 
the practical inferences. The old men had made 
a mistake; and not the old men alone; this was no 
longer the young, capable party worker whom 
Axelrod had favored by a friendly patronizing 
foreword ; this was rather a leader, fully cognizant 
of his goal, who, in my opinion, already felt him- 
self destined to be a leader, after he had worked 
side by side with the old men, the teachers, and 
convinced himself that he was stronger and more 
necessary than they. It is true that in Russia too 
Lenin had been the first among equals, according 


[55] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


to Martof’s expression. But there, after all, it had 
only been a question of the first Social Democratic 
groups, of young organizations. The Russian 
standards still bore the stamp of provincialism: 
how many Russian Lasalles and Russian Bebels 
there then! It was a different matter with the 
“Group for the Liberation of Labor”: Plechanof, 
Axelrod and Sasulich were in the same rank with 
Kautsky, Lafargue, Guesde, and Bebel, the real, 
German Bebel! When Lenin measured his 
strength in work with them, he had, at the same 
time, measured himself with the great European. 
standard. Especially in his conflicts with Plech- 
anof, when the staff grouped itself about the two 
poles, Lenin’s self-consciousness must have gone 
through that steeling without which he would not 
have been Lenin later on. 

And the conflicts with the old men were in- 
evitable. Not because there had been two dif- 
ferent conceptions of revolutionary movement. 
No, this was not yet the case at this time, but the 
manner of approaching political events, in or- 
ganizing and, particularly, in handling practical 
problems, consequently too the position towards 
the approaching revolution, were fundamentally 
different. The old men of the party had twenty 
years of exile back of them. For them the “Iskra” 


[ 56 ] 





LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


and “Saria’” was a literary undertaking above 
everything else. For Lenin, on the contrary, they 
meant the immediate instrument of revolutionary 
activity. In Plechanof the revolutionary skeptic 
was deeply rooted, as was proved a few years later 
(1905-1906) and more tragically still in the im- 
perialist war: he looked upon Lenin’s directness 
of purpose haughtily, and only had a malicious, 
condescending witty remark to make about it. Ax- 
elrod, as I have already said, was closer to the 
tactical problems, but his train of thoughts refused 
stubbornly to consider the questions of preparation 
for preparation. Axelrod analyzed with the 
greatest skill the tendencies and shadings of the 
different groupings of the revolutionary Intel- 
lectuals. He was a homeopath of the pre-revolu- 
tionary politics. His methods and mediums had 
something of the character of the apothecary shop, 
of the laboratory. The quantities with which he 
worked were always very small; the societies with 
which he had to do he could measure with the 
finest scales. Not without reason did Deutsch 
consider Axelrod like Spinoza, and not in vain 
was Spinoza a diamond cutter; a work that re- 
quires a magnifying glass. Lenin, on the contrary, 
looked upon the events and conditions as a whole 
and understood how to grasp the social complex 
in his thought; so he wagered on the approaching 


[57] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


revolution, which burst upon Plechanof, as well 
as Axelrod, all of a sudden. 

Probably Vera Ivanovna Sasulich felt most 
directly of the old people the approach of the 
revolution. Her strong character, free from all 
pedantry, intuitively historical, helped her in this. 
But she felt the revolution as an old radical. In 
the depths of her soul she was convinced that all 
the elements of revolution already existed among 
us, especially the “actual” self-confident liberalism 
that would take the leadership, and that we 
Marxists by our hasty criticism and “pursuit” only 
frightened the Liberals and thereby played 
fundamentally a counter-revolutionary role. Vera 
Ivanovna did not say all this in the press, of 
course. In personal conversations too she did not 
express it so fully. None the less it was her deep 
conviction and thence came the opposition be- 
tween her and Axelrod, whom she considered a 
doctrinaire. In reality, within the limits of tacti- 
cal homeopathy, Axelrod emphasized uncondi- 
tionally the revolutionary hegemony of Social 
Democracy. He only refused to carry over this 
view-point from the language of groups and 
unions to the language of the classes when they 
entered the movement. Here too the abyss be- 
tween him and Lenin was revealed. 

Lenin did not go abroad as a Marxist “in 


[ 53 ] 





LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


general,” not for publicist revolutionary work ‘in 
general,” not simply to continue the work of 
twenty years of the “Group for the Liberation of 
Labor”; no, he went as the potential leader, and 
not as a leader “‘in general,” but as the leader of 
that revolution that was growing and that he 
palpably perceived. He went to create within the 
shortest time the ideological tools and the or- 
ganizing apparatus for the revolution. I speak 
of Lenin’s impetuous and yet at the same time dis- 
ciplined characteristic of striving for his goal, not 
in the sense that he had only tried to assist in the 
victory of the “final aim,” no, that is too universal 
and shallow, but in the concrete, direct and im- 
mediate sense, that he had put up a practical goal, 
to hasten the beginning of the revolution and to 
assure its victory. As Lenin worked abroad 
shoulder to shoulder with Plechanof, and as what 
the Germans call “the pathos of distance” 
vanished, it must have become physically clear to 
the “pupil” that he not only had nothing more to 
learn from the teacher about the question which 
he then considered fundamental, but that the 
skeptical critical teacher, thanks to his authority, 
was in a position to hinder his rescue work and 
to separate him from the younger colleagues. This 
is the basis of Lenin’s far-seeing anxiety about the 
staff’s formation, hence the combinations of ‘The 


[59] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


committees of seven and three, “hence the striving 
to separate Plechanof from the “Group of Libera- 
tion of Labor,” to form a leading commission of 
three in which Lenin would always have had for 
himself Plechanof in questions of revolutionary 
theory and Martof in questions of revolutionary 
policies. The personal combinations were 
changed; but the ‘“‘anticipation” that remained un- 
changed in the man finally became blood, flesh, 
and bones. 

At the Second Congress Lenin won Plechanof, 
but he was an unreliable confederate. At the same 
time he lost Martof and lost him forever. Plech- 
anof had evidently noticed something at the 
Second Congress; at least he then said to Axelrod, 
as the latter reproached him in bitterness and 
surprise on account of his alliance with Lenin: 
“From this dough come Robespierres.” I do not 
know if this important sentence ever got into the 
press and if it is generally known in the party; but 
I vouch for its correctness. “From this dough 
come Robespierres! and even something much 
greater, George Valentinovich,” history replies. 
But apparently this historic revelation grew dim in 
Plechanof’s consciousness. He broke with Lenin 
and returned to skepticism and his biting sarcasm, 
which, as time went on, lost their sharpness. 

But in the anticipation of the “break” it was 


[ 60 ] 


a ch ee i 


— 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


not only a question of Plechanof and the old men 
of the party. At the Second Congress a certain 
commencement stage of the preparatory period 
came to anend. The circumstance that the “Iskra 
organization” split up quite unexpectedly into two 
almost even parts proved in itself and for itself 
that in this commencement stage much had 
happened that was not known. Class party had 
just broken through the shell of intellectual rad- 
icalism. The stream of Intelligentsia to Marxism 
was not exhausted. The student movement with 
its left wing inclined towards the ‘“‘Iskra.” Among 
the intellectual youth, particularly abroad, there 
were numerous groups that supported the “Iskra.”’ 
All this was youthfully green and for the most 
part hesitating. Women students who belonged 
to the ‘‘Iskra” put such questions to the chairman: 
“Can an ‘Iskra’ adherent marry a navy officer?” 
There were only three workmen at the Second 
Congress and that was only accomplished with 
trouble. The “Iskra” brought together and 
trained numbers of professional Revolutionaries 
and drew the young and heroically minded work- 
men under their banner. On the other hand, im- 
portant intellectual groups passed through the 
‘“Iskra” only to turn aside soon afterward to the 
people connected with “Osvoboschdenje.” The 
“Iskra” was successful, not only as the Marxist 


[61] 


LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA”’ 


organ of the proletarian party which was being 
formed, but also as the extreme left political com- 
bative publicist that would not let itself be bullied. 
The more radical elements among the Intel- 
ligentsia were zealously ready to fight for freedom 
under “Iskra’s” banner. Along with this, the 
pedagogic disbelief in the strength of the pro- 
letariat, that had found its expression earlier in 
economics, had now succeeded, and rather openly, 
in changing its color under the protection of 
“Tskra,” without thereby changing its nature. For 
in the long run “Iskra’s” brilliant victory was 
much greater than its actual conquests. I shall not 
undertake to pass judgment here to what degree 
Lenin accounted to himself clearly and completely 
for this before the Second Congress, but at any 
rate more clearly and completely than any one 
else. Those | rather motley currents that were 
grouped under “Iskra’s” standard were reflected 
in the staff itself. Lenin alone represented the 
coming day with its difficult problems, its fearful 
conflicts and unnumbered sacrifices. Hence his 
foresight and his combative mistrust. Hence his 
careful treatment of questions of organization that 
have their symbolic expression in paragraph I of 
the law about the membership of the party.’ 


*The statute is as follows in Lenin’s setting: “A member of the 
party is one who participates in an organization of the party”; in 
Martof’s form: “who works under the Control of the party.”—Trans- 


ator. 
[ 62 ] 





LENIN AND THE OLD “ISKRA” 


It is quite natural that when the Second Congress 
began to destroy the fruits of “Iskra’s” ideological 
victory, Lenin began a new arrangement, a new, 
more pretentious and stronger selection. To make 
up his mind to such a step, in which he had only an 
unreliable partial ally in Plechanof, while he had 
half the Congress and all the other members of 
the staff as open and decided opponents, under 
such circumstances to make up his mind to a new 
selection, he had to have a strong faith, not only in 
the thing itself, but in his own powers. ‘This faith 
grew out of his practically controlled self- 
estimation that sprang from his common work 
with the “teachers” and the first stormy conflicts 
which preceded the coming thunder and lightning 
of the split. Lenin’s entire, forceful directness of 
purpose was requisite to begin such an under- 
taking and carry it to its conclusion. Incessantly 
Lenin strained the bow string to the utmost, to the 
snapping point, while at the same time he care- 
fully tested it with his finger to see if it slackened 
anywhere, or if it threatened to break. 

“You cannot strain your bow like that; it will 
break,” they called to him from every side. 

“Tt will not break,” the master answered; “our 
bow is made of unbreakable proletarian material, 
and one must strain the party string more and 
more, for the heavy arrow has far to fly!” 


[ 63 ] 


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October, 1917 








BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


ENIN’S arrival in Petersburg and his ap- 
pearance at the workmen’s meetings 
against war and the Provisional Govern- 

ment I learned from the American newspapers 
in the Canadian concentration camp Ambhurst. 
The interned German sailors began at once to 
take an interest in Lenin, whose name they came 
across for the first time in the newspaper dis- 
patches. They were all impatiently waiting for 
the end of the war, which would open the gates 
of the concentration prison for them. They lis- 
tened with greatest attention to every voice raised 
against war. Up to this time they had known 
only Liebknecht. But they had often been told 
that Liebknecht had been bribed by the Entente. 
Now they learned of Lenin. I told them of Zim- 
merwald and Kienthal. Lenin’s appearance won 
over many to Liebknecht. 

On my journey through Finland I received the 
first new Russian newspapers, with telegrams 
about the entrance of Zeretely, Skobolef and other 
“Socialists” in the Provisional Government. The 
situation thereby became perfectly clear. The 


[ 67 J 


OCTOBER, 1917 


second or third day after my arrival in Petersburg 
I familiarized myself with Lenin’s April theses. 
It was exactly what the revolution needed. It was 
only later that I read Lenin’s article in “Pravda”: 
“The First Stage of the First Revolution,” which 
he had sent from Switzerland. Even yet one can 
and should read with the greatest attention and 
political advantage the first very indefinite num- 
bers of the revolutionary “Pravda,” against whose 
background Lenin’s “A Stranger’s Letter” re- 
veals him in his whole collective strength. Very 
calm in tone and theoretically explanatory, this 
article resembles a powerful steel spiral, sur- 
rounded by a strong band, which in the future 
will expand, spread out and embrace ideologically 
the entire meaning of revolution. 

I arranged with Comrade Kamenief for a visit 
to the editorial office of ‘‘Pravda’”’ on one of the 
first days after my arrival. The first meeting must 
have taken place on the sth or 6th of May. I told 
Lenin that nothing separated me from his April 
theses and from the whole course that the party 
had taken since his arrival, and that I was faced 
with the alternative, either to enter the party or- 
ganization at once “individually,” or to try to 
bring with me the best part of the “Unionists,” 
whose organization in Petersburg numbered al- 
most three thousand workmen, with whom were 


[ 68 ] 








BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


associated a number of valuable revolutionary 
forces: Urizky, Lunacharsky, Joffe, Vladimirof, 
Manuilsky, Karachan, Jurenief, Posern, Litkens 
and others. Antonof-Ovsyenko had already 
joined the party; I think Sokolnikof also. Lenin 
did not express himself categorically for one or 
the other. It was necessary, above everything 
else, that I make myself more familiar with the 
situation and the men. Lenin considered that 
some form of codperation with Martof, and par- 
ticularly with a part of Mensheviki International- 
ists who had just returned from abroad, was not 
out of the question. We must certainly watch 
what the relations of the “Internationalists” them- 
selves were to the work. As I tacitly agreed with 
him, I, for my part, did not force the natural de- 
velopment of events. Our political policy was 
the same. At the workmen and soldiers’ meet- 
ings I said from the first day of my arrival: ‘We, 
Bolsheviki and Internationalists,’ and as the con- 
junction “and” burdened my speech by its con- 
stant repetition I soon shortened the form and be- 
gan to say: “We, Bolsheviki Internationalists.” 
Thus the political union preceded the organized 
one.* 

I was at the editorial office of “Pravda” two or 

*N. N. Suchanof constructs, in his history of the revolution, a 


particular political policy that would have separated me from Lenin’s. 
But Suchanof is a well-known “constructivist.” 


[ 69 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


three times at the most critical moments before 
the July days. At these first meetings, and still 
more after the July days, Lenin gave the impres- 
sion of intense concentration and formidable self- 
possession beneath the mask of “prosaic” sim- 
plicity and calm. In these days the Kerenskiad 
seemed all-powerful. Bolshevism represented 
‘a miserable little company.” The party itself did 
not yet realize its future strength. But at the same 
time Lenin, determined, led it on to its prodigious 
tasks. 

His speeches at the first Congress of Soviets 
aroused anxiety and enmity among the Social 
Revolutionary Menshevist majority. They felt 
dimly that this man was aiming far ahead, but 
they did not see the goal itself. And the revo- 
lutionary little citizens asked themselves: Who is 
he? WhatisheP Ishesimply amadman?e Ora 
projectile of history of range as yet unknown? 

Lenin’s appearance at the Congress of Soviets, 
where he spoke of the necessity of imprisoning 
fifty capitalists, was perhaps not a rhetorical “suc- 
cess.” But it was extraordinarily significant. 
Short applause of the relatively few Bolsheviki 
accompanied the speaker as he left the platform 
with the look of a man who has not said all, and 
especially not as he wished to say it... . At this 
moment a breath of the unusual spread through 


[ 70 ] 


BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


the room. It was a suggestion of what was com- 
ing that all felt for a moment as they followed 
with bewildered looks this so commonplace and 
sO enigmatic man. 

Who is he? What is he? Did not Plechanof 
in his newspaper call Lenin’s first speech on the 
revolutionary soil of Petersburg a fantasia of 
fever? Did not the delegates chosen by the masses 
generally join the Social Revolutionaries and the 
Menshevikir Did not Lenin’s position among the 
Bolsheviki themselves at first arouse violent dis- 
satisfaction? 

On one side Lenin categorically demanded the 
break, not only with bourgeois Liberalism, but 
also with all kinds of Defensivism.*’ In his own 
party he organized the struggle against the “old 
Bolsheviki,” who—as Lenin wrote—had already, 
‘more than once, played a melancholy role in the 
history of our party because they thoughtlessly re- 
peated a current formula, instead of studying the 
peculiarities of the new living reality.2, Regarded 
superficially he thereby weakened his own party. 
On the other hand, he declared at the same time 
at the Congress of Soviets: “It is not true that no 
party was ready to seize the power now; there is 
such a party; it is our party.” Is there not an enor- 

* Adherent of a revolutionary defensive war against the Germans. 


—Translator. 
? Collected Works, Vol. XIV, Part I, page 28. 


ee 


OCTOBER, 1917 


mous contradiction between the position of a 
“Society of Propagandists,” isolated from all 
others, and this public declaration about the 
seizure of power in this gigantic land, shattered 
to its foundations? And the Congress of Soviets 
did not understand in the least what this curious 
man wanted, what he hoped for, this cold fanatic 
who wrote little articles in a little newspaper. 
When in the Congress of Soviets Lenin declared 
with great simplicity, which proved its genuine- 
ness by its plainness: “Our party is ready to take 
over the power altogether,” laughter resounded. 
“(augh as much as you wish,” said Lenin. He 
knew; who laughs last, laughs best. Lenin loved 
this proverb because he was firmly determined to 
laugh last. He went on calmly to show that, as 
a beginning, they should imprison fifty or a hun- 
dred of the most important millionaires and de- 
clare to the people that we looked upon all cap- 
italists as robbers, and that Tereschenko was no 
better than Miliukof, only duller. Terrible, de- 
structive, deadly simple opinions! And this rep- 
resentative of a small part of the Congress which 
applauded him discreetly from time to time, said 
to the whole Congress: “Are you afraid of power? 
We are ready to seize it.” As answer naturally— 
laughter, at the moment almost condescending, 
but just a little troubled. 


[72] 





BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


For his second speech, too, Lenin chose fear- 
fully simple words from the letter of a certain 
peasant: “We must grab the bourgeoisie more 
firmly so that they will burst in all their seams, 
then the war would come to an end; but if we do 
not grab the bourgeoisie thus, it will be nasty for 
us.” And this simple naive quotation is the whole 
program? How can that not be a surprise? And 
again laughter, condescending and troubled. In 
reality, these words, “grab the bourgeoisie,” had 
not much weight as an abstract program of a group 
of propagandists. The surprised people, how- 
ever, did not understand that Lenin listened un- 
erringly to the growing attack of history on the 
bourgeoisie which would inevitably make it 
“burst in all its seams.”’ Not in vain had Lenin 
declared in May to the citizen Maklakof that 
“the land of the workmen and the poorest peas- 
ants is a thousand times more Left than the 
Tchernofs and the Zeretelys, and a hundred times 
more Left than we.” 

Here was the chief source of Lenin’s tactics. 
Through the new, but already deeply troubled, 
democratic surface he perceived deep within “‘the 
land of the workmen and the poorest peasants.” It 
was ready for the greatest revolution. But the 
country did not yet understand how to prove its 
readiness politically. ‘The parties that spoke in 


73rd 


OCTOBER, 1917 


the name of the workmen and peasants deceived 
them. Millions of workmen and peasants did not 
know our party at all, had not yet realized it to 
be the champion of their endeavors, and our party 
itself had at that time not yet understood its whole 
potential power and was in consequence a “hun- 
dred times” more Right than the workmen and 
peasants. We had to force them together. We 
had to prepare the party for the masses of mil- 
lions and the masses of millions for the party. Not 
to hurry forward too far, but also not to stay be- 
hind. To explain carefully and perseveringly. 
Even the simplest things had to be explained. 
“Down with the ten capitalistic ministers!’ The 
Mensheviki do not agree? Down with the Men- 
sheviki! They laugh? Everything in its time. 
He laughs best who laughs last. 

I remember that I suggested demanding of the 
Congress of Soviets that they first consider the 
question of the offensive against the Germans that 
was being prepared at the front. Lenin agreed to 
the idea, but he evidently wanted to discuss it with 
other members of the Central Committee. At the 
first session of the Central Committee, Comrade 
Kamenief brought a draft of the declaration of 
the Bolsheviki about the offensive, hastily 


sketched by Lenin. I do not know if the document ~ 


still exists. His text did not suit either the Bol- 
[ 74 ] 





BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


sheviki taking part in the Congress or the Inter- 
nationalists, I no longer know why. Posern, too, 
whom we wished to delegate to bring it up, ob- 
jected. JI drew up another text which was ac- 
cepted. The organizing for bringing this for- 
ward, if I am not mistaken, was in the hands of 
Sverdlof, whom I met for the first time during the 
first Congress of Soviets as president of the Bol- 
shevik faction. 

In spite of his small and slender figure, which 
indicated the state of poor health, there was some- 
thing about Sverdlof’s manner that gave the im- 
pression of significance and quiet strength. He 
presided quietly and uniformly, exactly, as a good 
motor works. The secret lay naturally not in the 
art of presiding itself, but in the fact that he had 
an excellent idea of the personal composition of 
the assembly and knew exactly what he wanted to 
carry through. Every session was preceded by 
conferences with the separate delegates, inquiries, 
and warnings here and there. Before the open- 
ing of a session he had, on the whole, an idea of 
its course. But even without preparatory confer- 
ences he knew better than any one else how this 
or that workman would respond to the question 
put to him. The number of comrades of whose 

political horizon he had a clear idea was very 
large for the scale of our party at that time. He 


[75] 





OCTOBER, 1917 


was a born organizer and combiner. Every polit- 
ical question presented itself to him as concretely 
organizable above everything else, as a question of 
the correlations of separate people and groupings 
within the party organization, and of the correla- 
tions between the organization as a whole and the 
masses. The numerical significance he grasped 
immediately and almost automatically in algebraic 
forms. Thereby he furnished, so far as it was a 
question of revolutionary action, a highly impor- 
tant proof of the political formulas. 

After the flash in the pan of the demonstration 
of the roth of June, when the atmosphere in the 
First Congress of Soviets was at white heat and 
Zeretely threatened to disarm the Petersburg 
workmen, I went with Comrade Kamenief to the 
editorial offices of “Pravda” and wrote there, after 
a short exchange of opinion, at the suggestion of 
Comrade Lenin, the draft of an address of the 
Central Committee of the party to the Executive 
Committee (of the Congress). 

At this meeting Lenin said a few words about 
Zeretely, in regard to his last speech on the 11th 
of June: “He was once a revolutionary; how 
many years he has spent in prison! And now this 
complete renunciation of the past.” 

In these words there was nothing political, they 
were not spoken for politics, but were only the 


[ 76 | 








BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


fruit of a hasty reflection on the lamentable fate 
of the former great revolutionary. In his tone lay 
a tinge of regret, of sorrow, but it was said briefly 
and dryly, for nothing was so repugnant to Lenin 
as the slightest suspicion of sentimentality and psy- 
chological weakness. 

On the 4th or 5th of July I met Lenin (and also 
Sinovief?) as I remember, in the Tauride Palace. 
Our attack had been repulsed. The bitterness 
against the Bolsheviki had reached its peak among 
the governing powers. 

“Now they will overthrow us,’ Lenin said. 
“Now is their given moment.” His basic thought 
was to begin the retreat and, as far as it turned 
out to be necessary, to go on illegally. Lenin’s 
strategy had seldom had to make so sharp a turn, 
but it was as usual based on a rapid estimation of 
the situation. Later during the Third Congress 
of the Communist Internationalists, Vladimir Ily- 
ich said incidentally: “In July we committed not a ° 
few blunders.” By this he had in mind our hasty 
armed uprising, the much too aggressive form of 
the demonstration which was in no proportion to 
our forces in the scale of the country. Remark- 
able, nevertheless, is that calm decision with 
which on the 4th/sth of July he weighed not only 
the revolutionary, but also the opposite, side of 
the situation, and came to the conclusion that for, 


[77] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


“them” it was now the time to attack us. Fortu- 
nately our enemies had neither sufficient logical 
consistency nor decision. Otherwise it is very 
probable that they, that is their officers’ clique, if 
they could have laid hands on Lenin the first days 
after the July rising, would have treated him ex- 
actly as the German officers’ camarilla treated 
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg a year and a 
half later. 

A direct resolve to hide, or to act illegally, was 
not made at the above-mentioned meeting. The 
Kornilof episode was a continual fluctuation. I 
personally let myself be seen for two or three days 
more, and at some party and organizing confer- 
ences came forward with the theme: What is to 
be done? The stormy attack on the Bolsheviki 
seemed insurmountable. The Mensheviki tried 
in every way to make use of the situation, which 
had not developed entirely independent of them. 
I remember that I was obliged to speak in the 
library of the Tauride Palace at some meeting of 
the representatives of the mining companies’ 
unions. There were altogether a few dozen men 
present, the leaders of the unions. ‘The Menshe- 
viki predominated. I spoke of the necessity of a 
protest of the mining companies against the ac- 
cusation that the Bolsheviki were in alliance with 
German Militarism. Of the course of this meet- 


[ 78 ] 








BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


ing I have only a dim recollection now, but I do 
remember exactly two or three malicious faces of 
men who were there to hiss at us. 

At this time terror assumed fixed forms. Im- 
prisonments were the order of the day. For a 
few days I lay hidden in the home of Comrade 
Larin. Then I began to go out again, showed 
myself in the Tauride Palace, and was soon im- 
prisoned. My release followed during the days 
of the Kornilof episode and the ensuing Bolshe- 
vist counter-blow. At this time we succeeded in 
bringing the “Unionists” over into the Bolshevist 
Party. Sverdlof suggested to me that I meet 
Lenin, who was still in hiding. I no longer re- 
member who introduced me to the conspiring 
workmen’s quarters (was it not Rachiar), where 
[ met Vladimir Ilyich. There I met Kalinin also, 
whom Lenin further questioned in my presence 
about the mood of the workmen; whether they 
were fighting, whether they would go to the limit, 
whether we could seize the power, etc. 

What was Lenin’s mood at this time? If one 
wants to characterize it in a few words one must 
say that it was a mood of restrained impatience 
and deep anxiety. He saw clearly the moment 
approaching when everything would be at the 
knife’s edge, and at the same time he was of the 
opinion, and not without grounds, that the chiefs 


[79 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


of the party did not draw all the necessary conclu- 
sions. ‘The deportment of the Central Comit- 
tee seemed to him too passive and dilatory. Lenin 
did not feel it yet possible to return openly to the 
work because he feared that his imprisonment 
might strengthen the dilatoriness of the party 
leaders, which would inevitably have led to a neg- 
lect of the extraordinary revolutionary situation. 
Therefore in these days and weeks Lenin’s vigi- 
lance and impatience at all signs of hesitation, at 
all intimations of waiting and indecision, reached 
their climax. He demanded that we should at 
once put a real conspiracy to work, surprise the 
opponent, snatch the power,—and then we would 
see. At all events there must be more agreement 
about it. 

Lenin’s biographer will have to treat with the 
greatest attention the fact of Lenin’s return to 
Russia and his attitude toward the masses. With 
a short interruption in 1905 Lenin had spent more 
than fifteen years abroad. His feeling for reality, 
his instinct for the living, working human being 
had not only not diminished in this time, but on 
the contrary had been strengthened by the work 
of theoretical thinking and of creative imagina- 
tion. By separate chance meetings and observa- 
tions he grasped and renewed the picture of the 
whole. But still he had lived abroad in that period 


[ 80 ] 


BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


of his life in which he finally developed for his 
coming historical role. He arrived in Petersburg 
with a completed revolutionary point of view that 
was a résumé of the entire social, theoretical, and 
practical experience of his life. And here first, 
on the living experience of the awakening working 
masses of Russia, the test was made of what he 
had gathered, thought over, and made his own. 

The formulas stood the test. Moreover, here 
first in Russia, in Petersburg, they were filled with 
ordinary decisive concreteness and thereby with 
unconquerable strength. It is not yet the time to 
present the picture in perspective of the whole by 
separate and more or less accidental examples. 
The whole spoke for itself with all the voices of 
the revolution, and here Lenin proved, probably 
he felt it himself for the first time fully and com- 
pletely, to what degree he possessed the ability to 
hear the yet chaotic voice of the awakening mass. 
With what deep organic disdain he watched the 
petty quarrels of the leading parties of Russia in 
February, these waves of “powerful” public opin- 
ion which passed from one newspaper to another, 
the shortsightedness, the self-esteem, the talkative- 
ness,—in short, official February Russia. 

Behind this scene, set with democratic decora- 
tions, he heard events of quite another scale rum- 
bling: When the skeptics pointed out to him the 


[ 81 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


great difficulties of the mobilization of the bour- 
geois public opinion, and the little citizen element, 
he set his jaws, and his cheekbones stood out more 
prominently than ever. That meant that he was 
forcing himself not to tell the skeptics, sharply 
and clearly, what he thought of them. He saw 
and understood the obstacles throughout no less 
than the others, but he detected clearly, palpably, 
and physically, those gigantic forces accumulated 
by history, that now made their way to the surface 
and cast all obstacles aside. He saw, heard, and 
perceived above all the Russian workman, who 
had grown in numbers, who had not yet forgotten 
the experience of the year 1905, who had back of 
him the school of war along with its illusions, the 
lying and deceit of defensivism, and was now 
ready for great sacrifices and unheard-of exertions. 
He perceived the soldier, who had been bewil- 
dered by three years of diabolical war, “without 
meaning and without purpose,” until the thunder 
of revolution wakened him and he got ready to pay 
back all those meaningless sacrifices, humiliations, 
and blows by the explosion of a raging hate that 
spared nothing. He heard the peasant, who still 
dragged along. in the chains of hundreds of years 
of slavery, and now, roused by the war, for the 
first time saw the possibility of settling his ac- 
counts formidably and unsparingly with the op- 


[ 82 ] 





BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


pressors, the slaveholders, the masters. The 
peasant hesitated helplessly and clumsily between 
Tchernof’s jingle of words and his own “means,” 
the great agrarian uprising. Still filled with un- 
certainty, the soldier sought a path between patri- 
otism and unrestrained deserting. Although they 
were already incredulous and half hostile, the 
workmen still listened to the last tirades of Zere- 
tely. Already the steam seethed impatiently in the 
boilers of the Kronstadt armed cruisers. The 
sailor combined in himself the steel-sharpened 
hate of the workmen and the dull bear-like rage 
of the peasant, and, singed by the glow of the ter- 
rible war, had already thrown everything over- 
board that embodied for him the established 
bureaucratic and military oppression. The Feb- 
ruary revolution stood before an abyss. The be- 
nevolent coalition had gathered up, stretched out, 
and sewn together the shreds of czaristic legality, 
and converted it into a thin surface of democratic 
legality. But under it everything simmered and 
bubbled, all the wrongs of the past sought an out- 
let. Hatred toward the police, the district inspec- 
tor, the police commissar, the registrars, the man- 
ufacturers, those who lived on their incomes, prop- 
erty holders, toward the parasites, the white- 
handed, the reviler and the assailant, prepared the 
greatest revolutionary overturn in history. It was 


[ 83 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


this that Lenin saw and heard, that he felt phys- 
ically with infallible clearness and absolute con- 
viction when, after a long absence, he came into 
touch with the land stricken by the convulsions 
of revolution. 

“You fools, babblers, and idiots, do you believe 
that history is made in the salons, where high- 
born democrats fraternize with titled liberals, 
where miserable provincial advocates of yester- 
day very soon learn to kiss illustrious little hands?P 
Fools! Babblers! Idiots! History is made in the 
trenches where under the foolish pressure of war- 
madness the soldier thrusts his bayonet into the 
officer’s body and escapes to his home village to 
set fire to the manor house. Doesn’t this barbarity 
please you? Don’t get excited, history answers 
you: just put up with it all. Those are merely the 
consequences of all that has gone before. You 
imagine that history is made in your contact com- 
missions? Nonsense! Talk! Fancy! Cretinism! 
History—may that be shown—this time has chosen 
the palace of Kchesinskaja the dancer, the former 
mistress of the former czar, as its preparation lab- 
oratory. And from there, from this building, 
symbolic for old Russia, she prepares the liquida- 
tion of our entire Petersburg-czaristic, bureau- 
cratic-noble, junker-bourgeois corruption and 
shamelessness. Here, to the palace of the former 


[ 84 ] 





BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


imperial ballerina, are coming in streams the Rus- 
sian delegates of the factories, with the gray, 
scarred, and lousy messengers from the trenches, 
and from here new prophetic words will spread 
over the land.” 

The unfortunate ministers of the revolution 
held councils and tried to find a way to restore 
the palace to its legal owner. The bourgeois, So- 
cial Revolutionary, and Menshevist newspapers 
ground their teeth in rage because Lenin, from 
Kchesinskaja’s balcony, hurled the watchwords of 
social revolution among the masses. But this 
tardy effort was of no avail, either to add to Lenin’s 
hate against old Russia, or his decision to settle 
accounts with it! The one as well as the other 
had already reached its limit. On Kchesinskaja’s 
balcony stood Lenin, the same man who two 
months later hid himself in a hayloft, and who, a 
few weeks after that, took the place of president 
in the Council of People’s Commissars. 

But at the same time Lenin saw that there ex- 
isted within the party itself a conservative opposi- 
tion—for the first time not so much of a political 
as of a psychological nature—to that great leap 
that had to be made. Lenin watched with anxiety 
the growing difference between the mood of 
part of the party heads and the millions of work- 
men. He was not satisfied for a moment with the 


[85 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


fact that the Central Committee had adopted the 
formula of the armed uprising. He knew the dif- 
ficulties of the transition from words to deeds. 
With all the forces and means at his disposition 
he strove to subjugate the party to the masses, and 
the Central Committee of the party to the ranks 
of its fellow members. He summoned single com- 
rades to his place of refuge, gathered news, con- 
trolled, arranged cross-examinations, and in every 
direction, by indirect means, he sent his watch- 
words to the masses of the party in order to make 
the heads of the party face the necessity of acting 
and of going to the limit. 

To form a correct picture of Lenin’s behavior 
in these days we must be sure of one thing: he 
had unbounded faith that the masses would and 
could complete the revolution, but he had not the 
same conviction in regard to the party staff. And 
he realized at this time more and more clearly 
that there was not a minute to lose. A revolu- 
tionary situation cannot arbitrarily be maintained 
until the moment that the party is ready to make 
use of it. We had this experience in Germany 
not long ago. 

Even a short time ago we heard the view ex- 
pressed: if we had not seized the power in Octo- 
ber, it would have happened two or three months 
later. A big mistake! If we had not seized the 


[ 86 ] 


BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


power in October, we would not have seized it 
at all. Our strength before October lay in the 
uninterrupted influx of the masses, who believed 
that this party would do what the others had not 
done. If they had seen any vacillation at this 
moment on our part, any delay, any incongruity 
between word and deed, then in the course of two 
or three months they would have drifted away 
from us as they did formerly from the Social Rev- 
olutionaries and the Mensheviki. The bour- 
geoisie would have had a breathing spell and 
would have made use of it to conclude peace. The 
ratio of forces would have changed radically, and 
the proletarian revolution would have been post- 
poned to an indefinite future. It was just this that 
made Lenin decide to act. From this sprang his 
uneasiness, his anxiety, his mistrust and his cease- 
less hurry, that saved the revolution. 

The dissensions within the party, which came to 
an open breach in the October days, had already 
appeared significantly at some stages of the revo- 
lution. The first conflict, more one of principle 
and yet calmly theoretic, arose immediately after 
Lenin’s arrival in connection with his theses. The 
second resultless clash was connected with the 
armed demonstration of the 20th of April. The 
third hinged on the attempt at an armed demon- 
stration on the 1oth of June. The ‘Moderates” 


[ 87 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


believed Lenin wanted to foist upon them an 
armed demonstration with the aim of an uprising 
in the background. The next and sharper conflict 
flared up in connection with the July days. The 
differences of opinion filled the press. 

A further stage in the development of the inner 
struggle was reached in the question of the prelim- 
inary parliament. This time the two groups came 
openly and sharply to blows. Was a protocol 
agreed to in this session? Has it been kept? I do 
not know. But the debates were undoubtedly of 
extraordinary interest. The two tendencies, one 
for seizing the power, the other for the role of 
opposition in the Constituent Assembly, were 
clearly enough defined. The advocates of the 
boycott of the preliminary parliament were in the 
minority, and yet the difference of the majority 
was not very great. Lenin from his hiding place 
reacted on the debates in the faction and on the 
written resolution by a letter to the Central Com- 
mittee. This letter, in which Lenin declared him- 
self in more than energetic terms with the 
boycotters of the Bulygin Duma? of Kerensky- 
Zeretely, I do not find in the second part of vol- 
ume XIV of his “Collected Works.” Has this 
extraordinarily valuable document been pre- 

4In the beginning of 1905 Bulygin was commissioned by the Czar 


to carry out the electoral law for a duma that was to present propo- 
sitions to the Czar for “benevolent consideration,” 


[ 88 ] 


BEFORE THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 


served? The differences of opinion reached their 
highest tension just before the October stage, when 
it was a question of the suspension of exchange 
during the uprising and the appointment of the 
date of the uprising. And finally, soon after the 
revolution of October 25th, the differences of 
opinion over the question of coalition with the 
other socialistic parties grew extraordinarily 
sharp. 

It would be interesting to the highest degree to 
reconstruct concretely Lenin’s role on the eve of 
April 2zoth, of June roth, and of the July days. 
“We did stupid things in July,” Lenin said later, 
in private conversations as well as, so far as I re- 
member, in a conference with German delegates 
about the March events in Germany 1921. 
What were these “stupid things’? Were they the 
energetic, or much too energetic, method of attack 
and the active, or much too active, attempts to 
get information? Without such attempts to get 
information from time to time we might have lost 
contact with the masses. On the other hand, as is 
well known, active reconnoitering here and there 
becomes unconsciously a pitched battle. That 
was almost the case in July. The signal for re- 
treat was given, however, at just the right time. 
And our enemy had not the courage in those days 
to go to extremes. This was certainly not chance; 


[ 89 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


the Kerenskiad was in its whole being a half- 
measure, and this faint-hearted Kerenskiad para- 


lyzed the Korniloviad to the degree that it feared 
itself. 


[ 90 ] 


THE REVOLUTION 
A ferace? the end of the ‘‘Democratic Con- 


ference,” the 25th of October was set, at 

our insistence, as the term for the Second 
Congress of Soviets. In the mood that has been 
pictured, which increased from hour to hour, not 
only in the workmen’s quarters, but also in the bar- 
racks, it seemed most practical to us to concentrate 
the attention of the Petersburg garrison on this 
date, as the day when the Congress of Soviets had 
to decide the question of power, and the work- 
men and troops who were already properly pre- 
pared must support the Congress. Our strategy 
was aggressive in its nature; we were beginning 
an attack on the power, but our agitation was so 
arranged that the enemy should set about break- 
ing up the Congress of Soviets, and it would in 
consequence be necessary to oppose them with the 
most ruthless resistance. This whole plan was 
based upon the strength of the revolutionary 
stream which was rising high everywhere and 
which left the enemy neither rest nor peace. The 
rear-guard regiments would have preserved their 
neutrality in case of the worst happening to us. 


[91] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


Under such conditions the slightest step of the 
government against the Petrograd Soviet would at 
once assure us the decisive ascendancy. Lenin was 
afraid in the meantime that the enemy might suc- 
ceed in bringing up small but decidedly counter- 
revolutionary divisions of troops and attack us first 
with the weapon of surprise. If the enemy sud- 
denly got the party and the soviets in his power 
and seized the guiding center in Petersburg he 
would thereby decapitate the revolutionary move- 
ment and gradually make it harmless. 

“We dare not wait, we dare not delay,” Lenin 
repeated more and more frequently. 

Under these conditions at the end of September 
or the beginning of October the famous night ses- 
sion of the Central Committee took place at 
Suchanof’s home. Lenin came there firmly re- 
solved this time to carry through a resolution in 
which there was no further place for doubt, hesi- 
tation, prolongment, passivity, and delay. How- 
ever, before he attacked the opponents of the 
armed rising, he began to storm at those who had 
brought the rising into connection with the Sec- 
ond Congress of Soviets. Some one had told him 
of my speech: “We have already fixed the rising 
for the 25th of October.” I had actually used this 
sentence several times to those comrades who 
sought the path of revolution in the preliminary 


[92 ] 


THE REVOLUTION 


parliament and in a “vigorous” Bolshevist opposi- 
tion in the Constituent Assembly. “If the Con- 
gress of Soviets, Bolshevist in its majority,” I said, 
“does not seize the power, Bolshevism itself is 
condemned to death. In all probability then the 
Constituent Assembly would not even be convened. 
If, after all that has gone before, we convene the 
Congress of Soviets with a majority assured in ad- 
vance for us, we publicly bind ourselves to seize 
the power not later than the 25th of October.” 
Vladimir Ilyich inveighed against this date hor- 
ribly. The question of the Second Congress of 
Soviets, he said, was of no interest to him; what 
meaning did the Congress haver Would it ac- 
tually meet? And what can the Congress itself 
do in this case? We must seize the power, but 
not bind ourselves to the Congress. It was amus- 
ing and absurd to announce to the enemy the day 
of the rising. It would be the best thing to let the 
25th of October be a masquerade, but the rising 
must be begun absolutely before and independent 
of the Congress. The party must seize the power 
with armed hand and then we would discuss the 
Congress. We must immediately get into ‘action. 
As in the July days when Lenin definitely ex- 
pected “they” would overthrow us, he thought 
over the whole position of the enemy and came to 
the conclusion that, from the standpoint of the 


[ 93 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


bourgeoisie, it would be the best thing to surprise 
us with arms, to disorganize the revolution and 
then attack it alone. As in July Lenin over- 
estimated the sagacity and resolution of the 
enemy, perhaps also its material possibilities. 
To a considerable degree this overestimation was 
conscious and tactically quite right; it would dou- 
ble the energy of the party. But in spite of every- 
thing the party was not in a position to seize the 
power on its own responsibility, independent of 
the Congress and behind its back. That would 
have been a mistake that would not have been 
without effects upon the behavior of the workmen 
and could have made it extraordinarily difficult 
for the garrison. The soldiers knew the Council 
of Deputies and the soldier section. They only 
knew the party through the Congress. And if the 
rising took place back of the Congress, without 
connection with it, without being covered by its 
authority and without clearly and plainly putting 
an end to the struggle about the power of the 
Soviets, it might lead to dangerous confusion in 
the garrison. One must not forget also that there 
still existed in Petersburg, along with the local 
Soviet, the old All Russian Central Executive 
Committee with Social Revolutionaries and Men- 
sheviki at the head. We could only oppose that by 
the Soviet Congress. 


[ 94 ] 


THE REVOLUTION 


In the end three groups were formed in the Cen- 
tral Committee: the opponents of the seizure of 
power by the party whom the logic of the situa- 
tion forced to give up the rallying word, “the 
power to the soviets’”; Lenin, who demanded the 
immediate organization of the rising, independent 
of the Soviets; and the last group who considered 
it necessary to bind the rising closely with the Sec- 
ond Council of Soviets and in consequence wished 
to postpone it until the latter took place. 

“At all events,” Lenin declared emphatically, 
“the conquest of power must precede the Con- 
gress of Soviets, otherwise they will drive you 
apart and you will not have any Congress.” 
Finally, a resolution was passed to the effect that 
the rising must take place not later than the 15th 
of October. About the fixed date itself, as far 
as | remember, there was scarcely any discussion. 
All understood that it only bore an approximate 
character, an orienting one, so to speak, and that 
events might shift it to earlier or later. But only 
the question of the day could be discussed, noth- 
ing further. The necessity of a fixed date, and an 
early one, was quite well known. 

The chief debates at the sessions of the Central 
Committee were naturally devoted to the struggle 
with that section of the members who were totally 
opposed to an armed rising. I refrain from intro- 


[95 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


ducing here the three or four speeches that Lenin 
made at the sessions above mentioned on the 
theme: Must we seize the power? Is it the time 
to seize the power? Shall we keep the power if 
we seize it? Lenin wrote then and later some 
pamphlets and articles about this. His train of 
thought in the speeches at the meetings was nat- 
urally the same. But it is utterly impossible to 
picture the united spirit of these intense and im- 
passioned improvisations which were filled with 
the struggle to impress upon the opponents, the 
hesitating and the doubting, the course of his 
thought, his will, his conviction, and his courage. 
Here the fate of the revolution was decided. The 
session broke up late at night. All felt somewhat 
as though they had gone through a surgical opera- 
tion. Part of those present at the session, I among 
them, passed the rest of the night in Suchanof’s 
home. 

The further course of events helped us much. 
The attempt to change the Petersburg garrison 
led to the creation of the Revolutionary Military 
Committee. It was possible for us to legalize the 
preparation for the rising through the authority 
of the Soviet and to tie it up closely with the ques- 
tion which concerned the vital force of the whole 
Petersburg garrison. 

In the interval betwéen the session of the Cen- 


[ 96 | 


THE REVOLUTION 


tral Committee above described and the 2sth of 
October I recall only one meeting with Vladimir 
Ilyich and this only dimly. When did it occur? 
It must have been between the 15th and 2oth of 
October. JI know that I was much interested to 
see how Lenin would look upon the “defensive” 
character of my speech at the session of the Peters- 
burg Soviet. I had proved to be false the rumors 
that we were preparing for the 22nd of October, 
the “day of the Petrograd Soviet,” an armed ris- 
ing, and I announced that we would answer any 
attack with a decided counter-blow and go the 
extreme. I remember that Vladimir Ilyich’s mood 
was calmer and steadier, I might say, less suspi- 
cious. He not only made no objections to the 
openly defensive tone of my speech, but even rec- 
ognized it as quite efficacious in putting to sleep 
the carefulness of the opposition. None the less 
he shook his head from time to time and asked: 
“But will they not steal a march on us? Will they 
not surprise us?” I[ pointed out that afterward 
everything would follow almost automatically. 
At this meeting or at least a portion of it I 
think Comrade Stalin was present. Perhaps I 
am confusing two meetings. I must say in general 
that the recollections that have stayed in my mem- 
ory with regard to the last days before the revo- 
lution are so mixed that I can only separate them, 


[97 J 


OCTOBER, 1917 


analyze them, and arrange them in order with 
much difficulty. 

The next time I met Lenin was the very day of 
October 25th at Smolny itself. At what time? I 
no longer have any idea. It must have been to- 
ward evening. I remember well that Vladimir 
Ilyich at once asked anxiously about the negotia- 
tions that we were carrying on with the staff of 
the Petersburg military district about the further 
fate of the garrison. A communication had 
appeared in the newspapers that the negotiations 
were approaching a favorable end. 

“Are you agreeing to a compromiser” asked 
Lenin and looked at me piercingly. 

I told him that we had purposely given this 
calming news to the press, and that it was only a 
stratagem for the moment of beginning the gen- 
eral attack. 

“Well, that is g-o-od,” said Lenin, drawling his 
words, full of joy and enthusiasm. He rubbed his 
hands in excitement and began to pace up and 
down the room, “That is v-e-r-y good!” Ilyich 
liked the stratagem especially. To take in the 
enemy, to get the best of him,—was there anything 
better than that? 

But in the given case the stratagem had quite 
peculiar significance: it showed that we had al- 
ready entered directly into the zone of decisive 


[ 98 ] 


THE REVOLUTION 


actions. I began to tell him that the military op- 
erations were succeeding rather widely, and that 
at the moment we had already taken possession of 
a number of important points in the city. Vladi- 
mir Ilyich had seen on a placard printed the eve- 
ning before—or perhaps I showed it to him, too,— 
that every one who attempted to make use of the 
revolution for plundering was threatened with ex- 
ecution on the spot. At first Lenin was thought- 
ful; it even seemed to me as though he felt mis- 
givings about it. But then he said, “R-i-g-h-t.” 

He greedily examined all details of the rising. 
They furnished him with the indisputable evi- 
dence that the affair was in full swing, the Rubi- 
con passed, and that no recall and no retreat were 
possible now. I remember the strong impression 
made upon Lenin by the news that, by written 
command, I had ordered out a company of the 
Pavlovsky regiment in order to assure the appear- 
ance of our party and Soviet newspapers. 
_ “Has the company marched out?” 

Pe nas.” 

“And the newspapers are set up?” 

“Yes, indeed.” 

Lenin was delighted, which he showed by ex- 
clamations, laughter, and by rubbing his hands. 

I realized that, at this moment, at last he had 
made his peace with our refusal to seize the power 


[99 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


by aconspiracy. Up to the last hour he had feared 
the enemy might thwart our plans and surprise 
us. Only now, on the evening of the 25th of Octo- 
ber, he composed himself and gave his sanction 
finally to the course that events had taken. I say 
“he composed himself,’—but only to again get 
excited over a whole mass of questions, more and 
more concrete, big and little, that were connected 
with the further course of the uprising: “But lis- 
ten, ought we not do so and sop Ought we not 
undertake that and that? Ought we not bring up 
this and that?” ‘These endless questions and sug- 
gestions were superficially without any connec- 
tion, but they had their origin in one and the same 
intense inner comprehension, which had grasped 
at once the whole extent of the uprising. 

One must stop trying not to hasten too quickly 
into the events of the revolution. When the revo- 
lutionary stream mounts steadily, and the forces 
of the uprising grow automatically, while those of 
the reaction waver according to fate and fall to 
pieces, the temptation is very near to yield to the 
elementary course of events. Quick success dis- 
arms as much as defeat. One dare not lose sight 
of the clew to the events. After every new suc- 
cess one must say: Nothing is yet attained, noth- 
ing is yet assured; five minutes before the decisive 
victory the direction of events requires the same 


[ 100 | 


THE REVOLUTION 


vigilance and the same energy and the same force 
as five minutes before the beginning of armed ac- 
tions; five minutes after the victory, before the 
first exclamations of greeting have calmed down, 
one must say to himself: What has been conquered 
is not yet assured, there is not a minute to lose. 
That was Lenin’s grasp of the situation, his way of 
action and method, the organic essence of his 
political character, of his revolutionary spirit. 


I have already told once how Dan, on the way 
to a partial-session of the Mensheviki, recognized 
Lenin in disguise at the Second Congress of 
Soviets, as he sat with us at a little table in a pas- 
sageway. This subject has been preserved in a pic- 
ture, which, so far as I can judge from the repro- 
duction, has nothing in common with the reality 
of the time. ‘That is, however, the fate of his- 
torical painting in general and not its fate alone. 

I no longer remerhber on what occasion, but at 
all events, considerably later, I said to Vladimir 
Ilyich: “This ought to be sketched, or they will 
lie about it.” 

Jokingly he made a hopeless gesture: “They 
will lie in spite of that, without stopping .. .” 

The first session of the Second Council of 
Soviets took place in Smolny. Lenin was not pres- 
ent at it. He remained in his room at Smolny, 


[ ror | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


which, according to my recollection, had no, or 
almost no, furniture. Later some one spread rugs 
on the floor and laid two cushions on them. Vlad- 
imir Ilyich and I lay down to rest. But in a few 
minutes I was called: ‘Dan is speaking; you must 
answer.” When I came back after my reply, I 
again lay down near Vladimir Ilyich, who nat- 
urally could not sleep. It would not have been 
possible. Every five or ten minutes some one 
came running in from the session hall to inform 
us what was going on there. In addition, messen- 
gers came from the city, where, under the leader- 
ship of Antonof-Ovsejenko, the siege of the Winter 
Palace was going on which ended with its capture. 

It must have been the next morning, for a sleep- 
less night separated it from the preceding day. 
Vladimir Ilyich looked tired. He smiled and 
said: ‘The transition from the state of illegality, 
being driven in every direction, to power—is too 
rough.” “It makes one dizzy,” he at once added 
in German, and made the sign of the cross before 
his face. After this one more or less personal re- 
mark that I heard him make about the acquisition 
of power, he went about the tasks of the day. 


[ 102 | 


BREST-LITOVSK - 


E began peace negotiations in the hope 
of arousing the workmen’s party of Ger- 
many and Austria-Hungary as well as of 

the Entente countries. For this reason we were 
obliged to delay the negotiations as long as pos- 
sible to give the European workman time to un- 
derstand the main fact of the Soviet revolution 
itself and particularly its peace policy. After the 
first break in the negotiations Lenin suggested that 
I go to Brest-Litovsk. In itself the prospect of 
treating with Baron Kithlmann and General Hoff- 
mann was not attractive, but “in order to delay the 
proceedings there must be some one to do the de- 
laying,” as Lenin expressed it. In Smolny there 
was a brief exchange of views on the general char- 
acter of the negotiations. The question whether 
we should sign or not was postponed for a time; 
we could not tell how things would go, nor how 
they would react in Europe, nor what situation 
might arise. And naturally we had not given up 
hope of a rapid revolutionary development. 
That we could no longer fight was perfectly 
clear to me. When I passed through the trenches 


[ 103 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


on my way to Brest-Litovsk the first time, our 
comrades, in spite of all advances and encourage- 
ment, were quite unable to organize any signifi- 
can demonstration of protest against the enormous 
demands of Germany; the trenches were almost 
empty—no one ventured to speak even condi- 
tionally of a continuation of the war. Peace, 
peace at any price! . . . Later, on my return from 
Brest-Litovsk, I tried to persuade the president of 
the military section of the All Russian Central 
Executive Committee to support our delegation 
by a “patriotic” speech. “Impossible!” he ex- 
claimed, “quite impossible; we cannot return to 
the trenches; we would not be understood; we 
would lose all influence.” As to the impossibility 
of a revolutionary war, there was not the slightest 
difference of opinion between Vladimir Ilyich and 
myself, 

But there was the other question: Can the Ger- 
mans still fight? Are they in a position to begin 
an attack on the revolution that will explain the 
cessation of the war? How can we find out the 
state of mind of the German soldiers, how fathom 
it? What effect has the February revolution and 
later the October revolution had upon them? The 
January strike in Germany showed that the break 
had begun. But how deep was it? Must we not 
try to put this alternative before the German work- 


[ 104 ] 


BREST-LITOVSK 


men and the German army: on the one hand, the 
workmen’s revolution declaring the war ended; on 
the other, the Hohenzollern government that 
orders an attack on this revolution? 

“That is naturally very attractive,’ Lenin an- 
swered. ‘And certainly such questioning would 
not be without effect. But it is risky, very risky. 
Suppose German militarism is strong enough, 
which is very probable, to begin the offensive 
against us—what thene We dare not risk it; for 
the moment our revolution is the most important 
thing in the world.” 

The breaking up of the Constituent Assembly 
at first seriously harmed our international position. 
From the beginning the Germans had been afraid 
we might come to an agreement with the “patri- 
otic’ Constituent Assembly and that this might 
lead to an attempt to continue the war. A rash 
decision in this direction would have ruined 
finally the revolution and the country; but that 
would only have manifested itself later, and have 
required a new effort on the part of the Germans. 
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly meant 
for the Germans our avowed readiness to end the 
war at any price. Kihlmann’s tone became more 
brutal at once. What impression would the disso- 
lution of the Constituent Assembly make upon the 
proletariat of the Entente countries? The answer 


[ 105 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


was not difficult: the Entente press described the 
Soviet régime as nothing but an agent of the Ho- 
henzollerns. And now the Bolsheviki break up the 
“democratic”? Constituent Assembly in order to 
make a servile peace with the Hohenzollerns at a 
time when Belgium and the north of France are 
occupied by German troops. It was a matter of 
course that the Entente bourgeoisie would succeed 
in sowing much discord in the rank and file of 
workmen. And that would consequently facilitate 
the military intervention of the Entente against us. 
As is well known, even in Germany among the 
Social Democratic Opposition, there were stub- 
born rumors current that the Bolsheviki were 
bought by the German government and that what 
was going on in Brest-Litovsk was merely a 
comedy with the roles allotted in advance. This 
version must be more credited in France and Eng- 
land. It was my opinion that, cost what it might, 
before the signing of peace we must give the work- 
men of Europe a clear proof of the deadly enmity 
between us and governmental Germany. It was 
these very considerations that on my arrival in 
Brest-Litovsk suggested the idea of that “pedagogi- 
cal’ demonstration, that was expressed in the 
form: We shall stop the war but without signing 
the peace treaty. I conferred with the other mem- 
bers of the delegation, found them in sympathy 
[ 106 | 


BREST-LITOVSK 


with the suggestion, and wrote about it to Vladi- 
mir Ilyich. His answer was: “If you come here 
we will talk it over.”’ Possibly this answer already 
showed that he did not agree with my proposition ; 
at the moment I do not remember clearly and 
have not the letter at hand; indeed, I am not sure 
that I kept it. When I reached Smolny long dis- 
cussions took place between us. 

“That is all very attractive, and could not be bet- 
ter if General Hoffmann were unable to march his 
troops against us. But there is little hope of that. 
He will send specially chosen regiments of 
Bavarian peasants, and what thenP You have 
said yourself that the trenches are empty. And 
suppose he begins the war again in spite of every- 
thing?” | 

‘Then we would be forced to sign the peace 
treaty, and it would be clear to every one that we 
had no other way out. By that alone we would 
strike a decisive blow at the legend that we are in 
league with the Hohenzollern behind the scenes.” 

‘Naturally there is much to be said for that but, 
after all, itis too bold. For the moment our revo- 
lution is more important than everything else; we 
must make it sure, cost what it may.” 

To these main difficulties of the question were 
added exceptional ones within the party itself. In 
the party, at least in its leading elements, there 


[ 107 | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


was a strong disinclination to sign the Brest con- 
ditions. The news about the negotiations pub- 
lished in our papers fed and strengthened this 
feeling. It was most clearly expressed by that 
Left communistic grouping which advanced the 
solution of a revolutionary war. ‘This situation 
naturally disturbed Lenin greatly. 

“Tf the Central Committee decides to sign the 
German terms only under the pressure of a verbal 
ultimatum,” I said, “we risk a split in the party. 
Our party needs a disclosure of the actual state 
of affairs no less than the workmen of Europe. 
If we break with the Left, the party will make a 
decided curve to the Right. It is an undeniable 
fact that all the comrades who were against the 
October revolution or were for a bloc with the 
socialist parties would be unconditionally for the 
Brest-Litovsk peace. And our tasks are not fin- 
ished with the conclusion of peace. Among the 
Left Communists are many who played an active 
role in the October period,” etc. 

“That is all indisputable,” Vladimir Ilyich an- 
swered. “But for the moment the question is the 
fate of the revolution. We can restore balance in 
the party. But before everything else we must 
save the revolution, and we can only save it by 
signing the peace terms. Better a split than the 
danger of a military overthrow of the revolution. 


[ 108 ] 


BREST-LITOVSK 


The Lefts will cease raging and then—even if it 
comes to a split, which is not inevitable—return 
to the party. On the other hand, if the Germans 
conquer us, not one of us returns. Very well. Let 
us admit your plan is accepted. We refuse to 
sign the peace treaty. And the Germans at once 
attack. What will you do then” 

“We will sign the peace terms under bayonets. 
Then the picture will be clear to the workmen of 
the whole world.” 

“But you will not support the solution of a rev- 
olutionary war?” 

“Under no circumstances.” 

“With this understanding the experiment is 
probably not so dangerous. We risk the loss of 
Esthonia and Letvia. Some Esthonian comrades 
came to see me recently and told me how splen- 
didly the peasants had begun the socialist struc- 
ture. Itis a great pity if we must sacrifice social- 
ist Esthonia,” Lenin said jokingly, “but for the 
sake of a good peace it is worth while agreeing to 
a compromise.” 

“But in case of immediate signing of peace 
would the possibility of a German military inter- 
vention in Esthonia and Letvia be out of the 
question?” 

“Let us admit it is possible, but in any case it is 
only a possibility, while this is almost a certainty. 


[ 109 | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


In any case, I stand for the immediate signing of 
peace; it is safer.” 

Lenin’s chief fear concerning my plan was that 
in case of a renewal of the German attack we 
might have no time to sign the treaty; that is, that 
German militarism would leave us no time. “This 
beast springs suddenly,” Vladimir Ilyich often re- 
marked. In the conferences about the peace ques- 
tion Lenin opposed the Left with great decision, 
and my proposal discreetly and calmly. He con- 
cealed his ill humor and seemed reconciled, espe- 
cially as the party was openly against signing and 
the intermediate solution would be a bridge to the 
signing. A conference of the best known Bolshe- 
viki—delegates to the third Congress of Soviets— 
proved without a doubt that our party, that had 
just gone through the fiery furnace of October, 
needed control of the international situation 
through action. If we had not had an inter- 
mediate formula the majority would have voted 
for the revolutionary war. 

It is perhaps not without interest to remark here 
that the Left Social Revolutionaries did not at 
once come out against the Brest-Litovsk peace. At 
least Spiridonova was at first a decided advocate 
of the ratification. ‘The peasant does not want 
war,” she declared, “and will accept any peace 
whatever.” “Sign the peace at once,” she said to 


[ 110 ] 


BREST-LITOVSK 


me at my first return from Brest, “and annul the 
grain monopoly.” Thereupon the Left Social 
Revolutionaries supported the intermediate for- 
mula of the cessation of war without signing the 
treaty, but as a stage to revolutionary war—“in 
any event.” 

It is well known how the German delegation 
reacted to this declaration, that Germany would 
not answer by renewing military action. With this 
decision we returned to Moscow. 

‘““‘Won’t they deceive us?” Lenin asked. 

We made an uncertain gesture. It does not 
seem so. 

“Very well,” said Lenin, “if it is so, so much 
the better. We have kept our face and we are 
out of the war.” 

Two days before the expiration of the truce we 
received a telegram from General Samoilo, who 
had remained in Brest, that, according to the dec- 
laration of General Hoffmann, the Germans con- 
sidered themselves at war with us from February 
18th at 12 o’clock and had therefore requested him 
to leave Brest-Litovsk. Vladimir Ilyich received 
the telegram first. I was with him in his office. 
We were talking with Karelin and another Left 
Social Revolutionary. Lenin handed me the tele- 
gram in silence. I remember his look which made 
me feel at once that the telegram contained impor- 


[ 111 | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


tant and unfavorable news. Lenin hastily finished 
the conversation with the Social Revolutionary in 
order to consider the new situation. 

“That means they have deceived us and gained 
five days. ... This beast lets nothing escape it. 
There is nothing for us to do but sign the old con- 
ditions if the Germans still agree to them.” 

I replied that we must let Hoffmann make an 
actual attack. 

“But that means giving up Diinaburg, losing a 
lot of artillery, etc.” 

‘Naturally, it means new sacrifices. But they 
are necessary so that the German soldier enters 
Soviet territory in actual fighting. They are nec- 
essary so that the German workman on one hand 
and the French and English workman on the other 
may understand.” 

“No,” Lenin answered. ‘Naturally it is not a 
question of Dunaburg. But there is not an hour 
to lose. The trial is a failure. Hoffmann will and 
can fight. To delay is impossible; they have al- 
ready taken five days from us that I counted on. 
And this beast springs quickly.” 

The Central Committee decided to send a tele- 
gram at once that expressed our willingness to sign 
the Brest-Litovsk treaty. So the necessary tele- 
gram was dispatched. 

“T believe,” I said in a private conversation with | 


ginko 


BREST-LITOVSK _ 


Vladimir Ilyich, “it would be politically oppor- 
tune if I resign as People’s Commissar of Foreign 
Affairs.” 

“Why? We don’t want to introduce these par- 
liamentary methods.” 

“But my resignation would give the Germans 
the impression of a radical change in our policy 
and strengthen their trust in our actual readiness 
to sign and keep the treaty.” 

“Perhaps,” said Lenin thoughtfully; “that is a 
weighty political argument.” 

I no longer remember at what moment the news 
of the landing of German troops in Finland and 
the immediate victory over the Finnish workmen 
arrived. I only know that I met Vladimir Ilyich 
in the corridor not far from his office. He was 
greatly excited. I have never seen him like that 
either before or since. 

“Yes,” he said, “we must fight openly, even if 
it is to no purpose. For there is no other way 
out this time.” 

That was Lenin’s first reaction to the telegram 
about the overthrow of the Finnish revolution. 
But ten or fifteen minutes later when [ entered his 
office he said: “No, we dare not change our pol- 
icy. Our entering would not save revolutionary 
Finland, but would certainly ruin us. We shall 
support the Finnish workmen as best we can, with- 


[113 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


out, however, departing from the basis of peace. 
I do not know if this will save us. But in any 
case it is the only way in which deliverance is 
possible.” 

And deliverance actually came this way. 


The decision not to sign the peace treaty did 
not arise, as is so often said, from the abstract con- 
sideration that an agreement between us and the 
Imperialists was unthinkable. One has only to 
look up in Comrade Ovsiannikof’s little book the 
voting arranged by Lenin on this question, which 
proved helpful to the highest degree, in order to 
be convinced that the advocates of the trial for- 
mula “neither war nor peace” answered “yes” to 
the question whether we, as the revolutionary 
party, were justified, under certain conditions, in 
making a “disgraceful peace.” We actually said: 
If there were only twenty-five chances in a hun- 
dred that the Hohenzollern would not decide to 
fight us, or was in no position to do so, we must 
make the attempt, even with a certain risk, to sign 
the treaty. 

Three years later we ventured—at Lenin’s ini- 
tiative this time—to test Poland of the bourgeoisie 
and nobles with the bayonet. We were repulsed. 
Where is the difference between this and Brest- 


[114 ] 


BREST-LITOVSK 


Litovsk? ‘There is no difference in principle, but 
there is in the degree of risk. 

I remember that Comrade Radek once wrote 
that the strength of Lenin’s tactical mind was most 
clearly evident in the time between the Brest- 
Litovsk peace and the march on Warsaw. Now 
we all know that this Polish advance was a mistake 
that has cost us very dear. It not only led to the 
peace of Riga that cut us off from Germany, but 
with numerous other events of the same period, 
it gave a powerful impulse to the consolidation 
of the bourgeoisie of Europe. The counter-revo- 
lutionary significance of the Riga treaty for the 
fate of Europe can be best understood if you pic- 
ture the situation in 1923, under the supposition 
that we had had a common frontier with Ger- 
many; everything seems to show that the develop- 
ment of events in Germany would have followed 
quite a different course. It is undoubtedly true that 
the revolutionary movement in Poland itself would 
have turned out more favorably without our mil- 
itary intervention and its failure. As far as I know 
Lenin himself lays great stress upon the Warsaw 
mistake. Nevertheless Radek was quite right in 
his estimate of Lenin’s tactical span. Naturally 
after we had tested the working masses of Poland 
without the desired results, after we were repulsed 
and had to be repulsed, for in the event of Poland 


[rs] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


remaining quiet, our march on Warsaw was only 
a partisan affair; after we were obliged to sign the 
Riga peace treaty—it was not hard to conclude 
that those who opposed the advance were right, 
that it would have been better to stand aside and 
make sure the common boundary with Germany. 
All this only became clear later. The boldness of 
Lenin’s thought in the idea of the Warsaw ad- 
vance is remarkable. The risk was great, but the 
goal was greater. The chance of the plan’s fail- 
ing involved no danger for the existence of the 
Soviet Republic itself, but only a weakening. We 
can leave it to the future historian to judge 
whether it was worth while risking the degrada- 
tion of the terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty for 
the sake of a demonstration for the workmen of 
Europe. But it is quite clear that after this dem- 
onstration the peace terms forced upon us had to 
be signed under compulsion. And here the exact- 
ness of Lenin’s position and his powerful urging 
saved the situation. 

‘Suppose the Germans attack anyway: Sup- 
pose they march on Moscow?” some one asked. 

“Then we will withdraw to the east, to the 
Urals, and declare anew that we are ready to sign 
the treaty. The Kusnetsky basin is rich in coal. 
We will form a Ural-Kusnetsky Republic based on 
the industry of the Ural and the coal of the Kus- 


[ 116 ] 


BREST-LITOVSK 


netsky basin, on the proletariat of the Ural and 
the Moscow and Petersburg workmen we can take 
with us. If need be we can go further east, be- 
yond the Ural mountains. We will go to Kamt- 
chatka but we will stand together. ‘The interna- 
tional situation will change a dozen times, and 
we will enlarge the borders of the Ural-Kusnetsky 
Republic again and return to Moscow and Peters- 
burg. But if we now thoughtlessly involve our- 
selves in a revolutionary war and lose the flower 
of the workmen and our party, naturally we can 
never return.” 

The Ural-Kusnetsky Republic took up a good 
deal of space in Lenin’s arguments at this time. 
Repeatedly he disarmed opponents with the ques- 
tion: “Do you know that we have immense coal 
fields in the Kusnetsky basin? By combining the 
Ural metals and the Siberian wheat we have a 
new basis.” ‘The opponent who did not always 
know just where the Kusnetsky basin was, and 
what connection the coal there had with the future 
of Bolshevism and the revolutionary war, looked 
astonished or laughed in surprise and took it as 
half a joke, half a trick on Lenin’s part. In 
reality Lenin was by no means joking, but—true 
to himself—had considered the situation in all its 
issues and the worst practical results. The con- 
ception of the Ural-Kusnetsky Republic was or- 


[117] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


ganically necessary for him to strengthen his own 
conviction and that of others that nothing was yet 
lost and that a strategy of doubt was not in place 
nor ever could be. 

As is well known it never did come to the Ural- 
Kusnetsky Republic, and it is good that it did not. 
But nevertheless it can be said that the un- 
developed Ural-Kusnetsky Republic saved the 
Rin S) by Swi R! 

At all events the Brest-Litovsk tactics can only 
be understood and appraised when you connect 
them with Lenin’s October tactics. To be opposed 
to the October revolution and for Brest was really 
in both cases the expression of one and the same 
mood of capitulation. The characteristic thing is 
that after the capitulation of Brest-Litovsk Lenin 
displayed the same inexhaustible revolutionary 
energy that had assured victory for the party in 
October. Just this natural organic connection of 
the October revolution with Brest, the combina- 
tion of gigantic energy with bold foresight, of 
urging without losing the sense of proportion, pro- 
vides the measure for Lenin’s method and Lenin’s 
strength. 


[118] 


BREAKING UP THE CONSTITUENT 
ASSEMBLY 


FEW days, if not hours, after the October 
A revolution, Lenin raised the question of the 
Constituent Assembly. 

‘““We must postpone the elections,” he declared. 
“We must enlarge the suffrage by giving it to those 
who are eighteen years old. We must make pos- 
sible a new arrangement of the electoral lists. Our 
own lists are worthless, a crowd of intellectuals 
who have hastened here, while we need the work- 
men and peasants. The Kornilof men and the 
Cadets we must declare outside the law.” 

The answer was, “Postponement is unfavorable 
just now. It will be looked upon as a liquidation 
of the Constituent Assembly the more so because 
we ourselves reproached the Provisional Govern- 
ment with putting off the Constituent Assembly.” 

“Ah, that is folly,” Lenin replied. “Bring up 
important facts, not words. As far as the 
Provisional Government is concerned the Con- 
stituent Assembly would have meant a step for- 
ward, or at least might have meant it; as far as the 
Soviet power is concerned, and especially with 


[119 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


the present electoral lists, it will unquestionably 
mean a step backwards. Why is postponement 
unfavorable now?e And if the Constituent As- 
sembly is Cadet, Menshevist Social Revolutionary, 
—is that favorable?” 

“But we shall be stronger then,” others de- 
murred. ‘For the moment we are still too weak. 
In the country they know almost nothing of the 
Soviet power. And if the news penetrates there 
now, that we have postponed the Constituent As- 
sembly it would weaken us still more.” Sverdlof, 
who had more connection with the country than 
any of us, was particularly opposed to a postpone- 
ment of the elections. 

Lenin kept to his position without any support. 
He shook his head in dissatisfaction and repeated, 
“Tt is a mistake, an open mistake, that may cost 
us very dear! If it only does not cost the revolu- 
tionits headi'.’.)).” 

When, however, the decision—not to postpone! 
—was made, Lenin gave his whole attention to the 
organizing measures connected with the meeting 
of the Constituent Assembly. 

It turned out that we would be in the minority, 
even with the entrance of the Left Social Revolu- 
tionaries, who figured on the same lists with the 
Rights and were quite overcome with illusions. 

“Naturally we must break up the Constituent 


[ 120 ] 


—" - 


BREAKING UP THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 


Assembly,” said Lenin, “but then what about the 
Left Social Revolutionaries?” 

Old Natanson comforted us very much. He 
came to us “to talk it over,’ and after the first 
words said, “Well, as far as I am concerned, if it 
comes to that point, break up the Constituent As- 
sembly with force.” 

“Bravo,” exclaimed Lenin with joy, “what is 
right, must remain right. But will your party 
agree?” | 

“Some of us are wavering, but I believe that 
in the end they will agree,” Natanson answered. 

The Left Social Revolutionaries were at that 
time in the honeymoon of the most extreme 
radicalism and actually did agree. “But if we 
cannot act so,” Natanson suggested, ‘‘we will unite 
your faction and ours of the Constituent Assembly 
in a Central Executive Committee, and in this way 
form a convention.” 

“Whyr” Lenin replied, visibly annoyed. “To 
imitate the French revolution, is that it? By 
breaking up the Constituent Assembly we confirm 
the Soviet system. But your plan would put every- 
thing in confusion: neither one thing nor another.” 

Natanson attempted to prove that, by his plan, 
we would concentrate on ourselves a part of the 
authority of the Constituent Assembly, but he soon 
yielded. 


[ 121 | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


Lenin occupied himself intensively with the 
question of the constituents. 

“Tt is an open mistake,” he said. “We have al- 
ready gained the power and now we have put our- 
selves in a situation that forces military measures 
upon us to gain the power anew.” 

He carried on the preparatory work with the 
greatest care, weighed all the details, and sub- 
jected Urizky, who to his great sorrow had been 
appointed commissar of the Constituent Assembly, 
to a painful examination. Among other things 
Lenin ordered the transfer to Petrograd of one of 
the Lettish regiments consisting almost entirely of 
workingmen. | 

“The peasant may hesitate in this case,” he said. 
“Proletarian decision is necessary here.”’ 

The Bolshevist deputies of the Constituent As- 
sembly came from all ends of Russia and, at Lenin’s 
insistence and Sverdlof’s direction, were assigned 
to the factories, industrial works, and army corps. 
They formed an important element in the organiz- 
ing apparatus of the “Supplementary Revolution”’ 
of January sth. As for the Social Revolutionaries 
and deputies, they considered it incompatible with 
the rank of a people’s elector to take part in the 
struggle: ‘The people have chosen us; let them 
defend us.” 

In the nature of the thing these little citizens 


| 122} 


BREAKING UP THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 


from the province did not know at all what they 
should do; the greater part was simply afraid. 
But they carefully prepared the ritual for the first 
meeting. They brought candles with them in 
case the Bolsheviki cut off the electric light, and 
a vast number of sandwiches in case their food be 
taken from them. Thus democracy entered upon 
the struggle with dictatorship heavily armed with 
sandwiches and candles. The people did not give 
a thought to supporting those who considered 
themselves their elect, and who in reality were 
only shadows of a period of the revolution that was 
ilready past. 

During the liquidation of the Constituent As- 
sembly, I was in Brest-Litovsk. But when I came 
back to Petrograd the next time for a conference 
Lenin said to me about the breaking up of the 
Constituent Assembly, ‘Naturally it was a great 
tisk on our part that we did not postpone the con- 
vention—very, very unwise. But in the end it is 
best that it happened so. The breaking up of the 
Constituent Assembly by the Soviet power is the 
complete and public liquidation of formal democ- 
racy in the name of the revolutionary dictator- 
ship. It will be a good lesson.” 

Thus theoretical generalization went hand in 
hand with the transfer of the Lettish guard regi- 
ment. It was then undoubtedly that those ideas 


[ 123 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


took shape in Lenin’s consciousness which he 
formulated later at the first congress of the Com- 
munist Internationals in his remarkable theses 
about democracy. 

The critique of formal democracy has a long 
history. The character of mediocrity of the 1848 
revolution is explained by us and our predecessors 
by the breakdown of political democracy. It was 
succeeded by “‘social’’ democracy. But bourgeois 
society understood how to force it to take the place 
that pure democracy could no longer maintain. 
Political history went through a tiresome period 
in which social democracy lived on the critique of 
pure democracy, while it actually fulfilled the 
obligations of the latter and was carried through 
with its deficiencies. ‘That happened which history 
has so often shown: the opposition was called to a 
conservative solution of the tasks which the com- 
promised powers of the day before could not 
manage. From the circumstance of the transient 
preparation of the proletarian dictatorship democ- 
racy became the highest criterion, the last resort, 
the inviolable sanctuary, that is the last hypocrisy 
of bourgeois society. This is what happened to 
us. After the fatal material blow in October the 
bourgeoisie attempted a resurrection in January in 
the shadowy consecrated Constituent Assembly. 
The further victorious development of the pro- 


[ 124 ] 


BREAKING UP THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 


letarian revolution after the simple, open, brutal 
breaking-up of the Constituent Assembly dealt 
formal democracy a finishing stroke from which 
it has never recovered. For that reason Lenin 
was right when he said: “In the end, it was best 
that it happened so.” 


In the form of the Social Revolutionary con- 
stituency the February Republic had a chance to 
die a second time. 

On the background of my general impression of 
official Russia of February, of the Menshevist 
Social Revolutionary Petrograd Soviet of that 
time, there stands out as clearly as though it were 
yesterday the face of a certain Social Revolution- 
ary delegate. I did not know and do not know yet 
to-day who he was nor where he came from. He 
must have come from the country. Outwardly he 
resembled a young teacher, a former worthy sem- 
inarist. A flat-nosed, spectacled face, almost 
beardless, with prominent cheek-bones. It was at 
the same meeting at which the socialist ministers 
presented themselves to the Soviet. Tchernof, 
verbose, emotional, feeble, coquettish, and above 
all sickening, explained why he and the others had 
entered the government and what beneficial re- 
sults that entailed. I remember a stupid phrase 
the speaker repeated a dozen times: “You have 


[125 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


brought us into the government, you can also get 
us out.” The seminarist looked at the speaker 
with eyes of intense adoration. So must a faithful 
pilgrim feel and look when in a renowned cloister 
he has the good fortune to hear the exhortation 
of a pious priest. ‘The speech flowed on endlessly, 
the room showed signs of weariness, slight noises 
were heard. But for the seminarist the sources 
of reverent delight did not seem to be exhausted. 

“Yes, this is the way it looks, our revolution, or 
rather theirs,’ I said to myself, when I saw and 
heard for the first time this Soviet of 1917. 

When Tchernof finished his speech there was 
stormy applause. In one corner the few Bol- 
sheviki talked discontentedly. This group sud- 
denly arose from the collective background when 
they gave friendly support to my criticism of the 
defensive war ministerialism of the Mensheviki 
and Social Revolutionaries. 

The devout seminarist was frightened and dis- 
turbed to the highest degree. Not indignant: in 
those days he did not yet dare to feel indignation 
at an exile who had come back to his home. But 
he could not understand how any one could be 
opposed to a fact so gratifying and admirable in 
every way as Ichernof’s entry in the provisional 
government. He sat a few steps from me and on 
his countenance, which served me as a barometer 


[ 126 ] 


BREAKING UP THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 


of the assembly, surprise and terror struggled with 
the reverence that had not yet entirely dis- 
appeared. This face has always clung to my 
memory as an image of the February revolution 
—its best image, coming from the ranks, little 
citizen seminarist, for it had another worse one, 
that of Dan and Tchernof. 

Not in vain and not by chance was Tchernof 
president of the Constituent Assembly. February 
Russia, dully revolutionary, still half illusionistic, 
republican-daring as it was, and oh, at one time 
how simple! and ah, at another, how crafty! had 
raised him up. ... At the election the peasant 
had snatched up the Tchernofs by means of the 
devout seminarists and put them in a high position. 
And Tchernof had accepted this mandate not 
without race grace and race cunning. 

For Tchernof (for I am going to speak of that 
too) was in his way also national. I say “also” 
because four years ago I had to write about na- 
tionalism in Lenin. The comparison or even the 
indirect approach of these two figures may seem 
unsuitable. And it would indeed be wrong and 
unseemly if it were a question of the men them- 
selves. But here it is a question of the national 
“elements,” of their embodiment and reflection. 
Tchernof embodies the epigone of the old intel- 


[127] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


lectual revolutionary tradition, Lenin, on the other 
hand, its consummation and complete victory. 

Among the old intelligentsia the noble had his 
seat and prated contritely and fluently of duty to 
the people; and so also the pious seminarist, who 
from his father’s little room, lighted by the sacred 
lamps, had opened a little window, a mere chink, 
into the world of critical thinking, and the enlight- 
ened peasant who wavered between socialization 
and separate ownership, and the simple working- 
man who had strayed among the students, was 
separated from his own kind, and was not in touch 
with the strangers. This is all contained in the 
Tchernoviad, and its fulsome eloquence, formless- 
ness, and restless mediocrity. Of the old intel- 
lectual idealism of the time of Sophie Perovskaja 
there is nothing left in the Tchernoviad. In place 
of that is something of the new Russia of the 
industrialists and merchants, especially of the 
kind, “if you do not cheat, you do not 
sell.” 

In the development of the Russian social 
thought of his time Herzen was an important and 
forceful figure. But put him back even a half 
century, strip away the rainbow feathers of his 
talent, transform him into his own epigone, and 
put him before the background of the years 1905- 
1917, and you have the element of the Tcher- 

[ 128 ] 


BREAKING UP THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 


noviad. With Tchernichevsky an operation of this 
kind is harder to carry out, but the Tchernoviad 
contains for him too, elements for caricature. The 
connection with Michailovsky is very direct, for 
in Michailovsky himself the epigone character 
already predominated. The peasant element was 
the foundation of the Tchernoviad as of our whole 
development, but reflected in the small bourge- 
Oisie, immature, half intellectual, from the town 
and country, or in the over-ripe and bitter intel- 
ligentsia. The culmination of the Tchernoviad 
was necessarily a fleeting moment. While the 
impulse which the soldier, workman and peasant 
had given at the February uprising, spread 
through the one year-volunteers, the seminarists, 
students, and advocates, through the liaison-com- 
missions and all other possible subtleties, and 
raised the Tchernofs to democratic heights, in the 
depths the decisive breach had already been made 
and the democratic heights hung in the air. For 
this reason the whole Tchernoviad between Feb- 
ruary and October, concentrated on the adjuration: 
“Delay, oh moment, thou art so beautiful.” But 
the moment did not delay. The soldier became 
“Satan,” the peasant succeeded beyond all bounds, 
and even the seminarist made amends for his 
February devotion, and the end was that the 
Tchernoviad dropped the folds of its toga and 


[ 129 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


fell awkwardly from the heights of fancy into the 
actual mire. | 

The peasant element is the basis of Leninism so 
far as it is the basis of the Russian proletariat and 
our whole history. Happily, there is in our his- 
tory not only passivity and enthusiasm, but also 
movement. The peasant has not only prejudices, 
but also discernment. All the traits of activity, 
courage, hatred of force and power, scorn of weak- 
ness, in a word, all those elements of movement 
that are manifest in the course of social transitions 
and the dynamics of class struggle, have found 
their expression in Bolshevism. The peasant ele- 
ment is reflected here by the proletariat, by the 
strongest dynamic force in our history, and not 
alone in ours, and Lenin gave legitimate expres- 
sion to this refraction. And so in this sense Lenin 
is the leader of the national element. ‘The Tcher- 
noviad reflects the same national peasant element, 
but not from the head—particularly not from the 
head. | 

The tragicomic episode of January sth, 1918 
(breaking up the Constituent Assembly) was the 
last conflict of principles of Leninism with the 
Tchernoviad. But only of principles, for practi- 
cally there was no conflict, but only a small and 
miserable demonstration of the rear-guard of 
“democracy,” departing from the scene armed 


[ 130 ] 


BREAKING UP THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 


with candles and sandwiches. The heralded stories 
burst to pieces, the cheap decorations were pulled 
down, the bombastic moral strength proved itself 
foolish weakness. Finis! 


[131 ] 


FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


HE power in Petersburg was won. There- 
fore it was a question of forming the 
government. 

“What name shall we use?” Lenin considered 
aloud. ‘‘Not minister, that is a repulsive, worn- 
out designation.” 

“We might say commissars,” I suggested, “but 
there are too many commissars now. Perhaps 
chief commissar.... No, ‘chief? sounds bad. 
What about people’s commissars?” .. . 

“People’s Commissars? As for me, I like it. 
And the government as a whole?” 

“Council of People’s Commissars?” 

“Council of People’s Commissars,” Lenin re- 
peated. “Thatis splendid. That smells of revolu- 
tion.” 

I remember this last expression literally.* 

Behind the scenes tedious discussions went on 
with Wikshel, the Left Social Revolutionaries, 
and others. I can give little information on this 
subject. I only remember Lenin’s furious indigna- 


*Comrade Miluitin has told this story differently; but the above 
seems to me more correct. At all events Lenin’s words: “That 
smells of revolution” had to do with my suggestion to call the 
government as a whole: “Council of People’s Commissars.” 


[ 132 ] 


FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


tion at Wikshel’s shameless demands, and his no 
less furious indignation at those among us who 
were impressed by these demands. But we con- 
tinued the discussions for, as things stood, we had 
to reckon with Wikshel. | 

At Comrade Kamenief’s initiative the law in- 
troduced by Kerensky about the death penalty for 
soldiers was repealed. I no longer remember ex- 
actly where Kamenief made this motion; but 
probably in the Revolutionary Military Com- 
mittee and apparently on the very morning of the 
25th of October. J remember that it occurred in 
my presence and that I made no objections. Lenin 
was not yet there. It was evidently before his 
arrival in Smolny. When he learned of this first 
legislative act his anger knew no bounds. 

‘That is madness,” he repeated. “How can we 
accomplish a revolution without shootinge Do 
you think you can settle with your enemies if you 
disarmp What repressive measures have you thenr 
Imprisonment? Who pays any attention to that - 
in a time of bourgeois war when every party hopes 
for victory?” 

Kamenief tried to show that it was only a ques- 
tion of the repeal of the death penalty that 
Kerensky had introduced especially for deserting 
soldiers. But Lenin was not to be appeased. It 
was clear to him that this decree did not mean a 


L 133 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


cessation of the unheard of difficulties that we 
faced. 

“Tt is a mistake,” he repeated, ‘‘an inadmissible 
weakness. Pacifist illusion. ...’ He proposed 
changing the decree at once. We told him this 
would make an extraordinarily unfavorable im- 
pression. Finally some one said: ‘‘the best thing 
is to resort to shooting only when there is no other 
way.” And it was left at that. 

The bourgeois Social Revolutionary Menshevist 
press, from the first days after the revolution, 
formed a unanimous chorus of wolves, jackals, and 
mad dogs. The “Novoe Vremya”’ tried to strike a 
“loyal” tone and dropped its tail between its legs. 

‘Shall we not tame this packe” Vladimir Ilyich 
asked at every opportunity. “For God’s sake, what 
kind of dictatorship is that!” 

The newspapers had taken up especially the 
words “‘steal the stolen” and distorted it in all 
ways, in proverbs, poems and feuilletons. 

“And now they won’t let go of this ‘steal the 
stolen,’’’ Lenin once said in comic despair. 

“From whom did these words comeP” I asked. 
“Or are they invented?” 

“No, I once actually said them,” Lenin an- 
swered. “I said it and forgot it, and they have 
made a whole program out of it.” And he made 
a joking gesture. 


[ 134 ] 





FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


Every one who knows anything about Lenin 
knows very well that one of his strongest sides 
was the ability to separate the essence of a thing 
from its form. But this does not contradict in any 
way the fact that he valued the form also extra- 
ordinarily, for he knew the power of the formal on 
the mind, and thereby changed the formal into the 
material. From the moment that the Provisional 
Government was overthrown Lenin officiated as 
the government in large things as well as small. 
We had as yet no apparatus; connection with the 
country was lacking; the employees were on > 
strike; Wikshel cut the telephone connection with 
Moscow; we had neither money nor an army. But 
Lenin took hold of absolutely everything by means 
of statutes, decrees, and commands in the name of 
the government. Naturally he was further re- 
moved than any one from a superstitious adherence 
to formal oaths. He had recognized too clearly 
that our power lay in the new state apparatus 
which was built up by the masses, by the Petrograd 
districts. But to combine the work coming from 
above, from the abandoned or wrecked govern- 
ment offices, with the productive work from below, 
this tone of formal energy was necessary, the tone 
of a government that to-day is a mere idea, but 
to-morrow or the day after will be the power and 
consequently must act to-day as the power. This 


[135 ] 


OCTOBER, I917 


formalism was also necessary to discipline our 
own brotherhood. Over the stormy element, over 
the revolutionary improvisations of the foremost 
proletarian groups, were gradually spun the 
threads of a government apparatus. 

Lenin’s office and mine in Smolny were in 
opposite ends of the building. The corridor that 
connected us, or rather separated us, was so long 
that Vladimir Ilyich laughingly suggested estab- 
lishing a bicycle connection. We were connected 
by telephone and sailors were constantly running 
in bringing important notices from Lenin. On 
little slips of paper were two or three expressive 
sentences, each categorically formulated, the most 
important words two or three times underlined, 
and at the end a question that was also direct to 
the point. Several times a day I went through the 
endless corridor, that resembled a bee-hive, to 
Vladimir Ilyich’s room. Military questions were 
the center of the conversations. The work for the 
Foreign Ministry I had left entirely to Comrades 
Markin and Salkind. I confined myself to draw- 
ing up a few agitatory notes and to seeing a few 
people. 

The German attack presented the most difficult 
problems, which we had no means of solving, and 
also not the slightest idea how we should find 
these means, nor how we should create them. The 


[ 136 ] 





FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


draft written by me: “The socialist fatherland is 
in danger,’ was discussed with the Left Social 
Revolutionaries. As recruits of internationalism 
the title of the appeal alarmed the latter. On the 
other hand Lenin thoroughly approved of it. 
“That shows at once the change, from our cessa- 
tion to the defense of the fatherland, at 180 de- 
grees. It is exactly what we need!” In one of 
the last points of the draft there was the question 
of the immediate execution of any one who gave 
assistance to the enemy. The Left Social Revolu- 
tionary Steinberg, whom a curious wind had 
driven into the revolution and even into the 
Council of People’s Commissars, raised objections 
to this severe threat as it destroyed the “pathos of 
the appeal.” 

“On the contrary,” exclaimed Lenin, “just there 
lies the real revolutionary pathos (he displaced 
the accent ironically). Do you think we can be 
victors without the most severe revolutionary 
terror?” 

That was the period when Lenin, at every 
passing opportunity, emphasized the absolute 
necessity of the terror. All signs of sentimental- 
ity, laziness, or indifference—and all these were 
present even though in an attenuated form—did 
not enrage him in and for themselves, but as a sign 
that even the heads of the workmen’s class did not 


[ 137 ] 


OCTOBER, I917 


yet sufficiently estimate the unheard-of difficulties 
of the problems, which could only be solved by 
measures of equally unheard-of energy. 

“They,” said Lenin speaking of the enemy, “are 
faced by the danger of losing everything. And 
moreover they have hundreds of thousands of men 
who have gone through the school of war, sated, © 
determined, officers ready for anything, ensigns, 
bourgeois, and heirs of land owners, police and 
well-to-do peasants. And there are, pardon the 
expression, ‘revolutionaries’ who imagine we 
should complete the revolution in love and kind- 
ness. Yes? Where did they go to school? What 
do they understand by dictatorship? What will 
become of a dictatorship if one is a weakling?” 

We heard such tirades from him a dozen times 
a day and they were always aimed at some one 
among those present who was suspected of 
“pacifism.” Lenin let no opportunity pass, when 
they spoke in his presence of the revolution and 
the dictatorship, particularly if this happened at 
the meetings of the Council of People’s Com- 
missars, or in the presence of the Left Social 
‘Revolutionaries or hesitating Communists, of re- 
marking: “Where have we a dictatorship? Show 
it to me. It is confusion we have, but no dictator- 
ship.” 

The word “confusion” he was very fond of. 


[ 138 ] 


FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


“Tf we are not ready to shoot a saboteur and white 
guardist, what sort of big revolution is that? Just 
see how the bourgeois pack writes about us in the 
press! Where is there a dictatorship here? Noth- 
ing but talk and confusion. .. .”. These speeches 
expressed his actual feeling, but at the same time 
they had a twofold end: according to his method 
Lenin hammered into the heads the consciousness 
that only unusually strong measures could save the 
revolution. 

The weakness of the new state apparatus was 
most clearly manifest at the moment the Germans 
began the attack. ‘Yesterday we still sat firm in 
the saddle,” said Lenin when alone with me, ‘‘and 
to-day we are only holding fast to the mane. But 
it is also a lesson. And this lesson cannot fail to 
have an effect upon our cursed negligence. To 
create order and really to attack the thing, is what 
we must do, if we do not wish to be enslaved! It 
will be a very good lesson if . . . if only the Ger- 
mans, along with the Whites, do not succeed in 
overthrowing us.” 

“Well,” Vladimir Ilyich once asked me quite 
unexpectedly, “if the White Guards kill you and 
me will Bucharin come to an understanding with 
Sverdlof?” 

“Perhaps they will not kill us,” I answered 
jokingly. 

[ 139 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


“The devil knows,” said Lenin and began 
to laugh himself. With that the conversation 
ended, 

In one of the rooms at Smolny the staff held its 
sessions. It was the most confused of all the in- 
stitutions. One never knew who made the arrange- 
ments, who commanded, and what was proper. 
Here was introduced for the first time the question 
of the military specialists in its general form. We 
had had some experience in this direction already 
in a struggle with Krasnov when we made Colonel 
Muravief commanding officer and he, on his side, 
appointed Colonel Walden to conduct the opera- 
tions before Pulkov. Four sailors and a soldier 
were sent to Muravief with instructions to be on 
guard and not to take their hands from their 
revolvers. That was the origin of the system of 
the Commissars. To a certain extent this experi- 
ence was also the basis of the formation of the 
Supreme War Council. 

‘Without severity to presuming and «cherie nnee 
military men we will not get out of this chaos,” 
I said to Vladimir Ilyich every time I had been 
to the staff. 

‘That is evidently right; but they will certainly 
make use of treachery.” 

‘We must appoint a commissar for each one.” 

“You had better give them two,” Lenin ex- 


[ 140 ] 


FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


claimed, “and strong ones. But it cannot be that 
we have no strong communists.”’ 

Thus began the formation of the Supreme War 
Council. 

The question of the transfer of the government 
to Moscow caused no little friction. It seemed to 
be a desertion of Petrograd, which had laid the 
cornerstone of the October revolution. The work- 
men would not understand it. Smolny had become 
the symbol of the Soviet power and now they 
propose to liquidate it, etc. 

Lenin was literally beside himself and replied 
to these objections: ‘Can you cover the question of 
the fate of the revolution with that kind of senti- 
mental stupiditye If the Germans at a single 
bound take possession of Petersburg with us with- 
in it, the revolution is lost. If on the other hand 
the government is in Moscow, then the fall of 
Petersburg would only mean a serious part blow. 
How is it possible that you do not see and compre- 
hend that? Besides if we stay in Petersburg under 
the present conditions we increase its military 
danger and at the same time rouse the Germans 
to occupation of Petersburg. If on the contrary 
the government is in Moscow the temptation to 
take Petersburg is incomparably less. Is it any 
great advantage to occupy a hungry revolutionary 
city if this occupation does not decide the fate of 


[141 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


the revolution and of peace? What is that stupid 
speech about the symbolic meaning of Smolny?r 
Smolny is only Smolny because we are init. And 
when we are in the Kremlin all their symbolism 
will be transferred to the Kremlin.” 

Finally the opposition was conquered. ‘The 
government moved to Moscow. I remained in 
Petersburg for some time, I believe, as the presi- 
dent of the Petersburg revolutionary committee. 
On my arrival in Moscow I encountered Vladimir 
Ilyich in the Kremlin, in the so-called Cavaliers’ 
wing. The “confusion,” that is the disorder and 
chaos, were no less here thanin Smolny. Vladimir 
Ilyich scolded good-naturedly about the Mus- 
covites who fought for precedence, and he drew 
the reins tighter, step by step. 

The government, which was renewed rather 
often in its separate parts, developed a feverish 
work in decrees. Every session of the Council 
of People’s Commissars at first presented the 
picture of legislative improvisation on the great- 
est scale. Everything had to be begun at the be- 
ginning, had to be wrung from the ground. We 
could not offer “precedents,” for history knew of 
none. Even simple requests were made difficult 
by the lack of time. The questions came up in 
progression of revolutionary inquisitiveness, that 
is, in incredible chaos. Big and little were 


[ 142 ] 


eS ee Tee en ees 


FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


mingled most remarkably. Less important prac- 
tical problems led to the most involved questions 
of principle. Not all, by no means all, the decrees 
were in harmony, and Lenin joked more than 
once, even openly, at the discords in our product 
of decrees. But in the end these contradictions, 
even if uncouth viewed from the practical tasks 
of the moment, were lost sight of in the work of 
revolutionary thinking, that, by means of legisla- 
tion, pointed out new ways for a new world of 
human relations. 

It remains to be said that the direction of this 
whole work was incumbent upon Lenin. He pre- 
sided unweariedly, five or six hours at a time, at 
the Council of People’s Commissars—and these 
meetings took place daily at the first period— 
passed from question to question, led the debates, 
allotted the speakers’ time carefully by his watch, 
time that was later regulated by a presiding time- 
meter (or second-meter). 

In general the questions came up without any 
preparation, and they never could be postponed, as 
has already been stated. Very often the nature 
of the question, before the beginning of the debate, 
was unknown to the members of the Council of 
People’s Commissars as well as to the president. 
But the discussions were always concise, the in- 
troductory report was given five to ten minutes. 


[ 143 | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


None the less the president towed the meeting into 
the right channel. If the meeting was well at- 
tended and if there were any specialists and par- 
ticularly any unknown persons among the partici- 
pants, then Vladimir Ilyich resorted to one of his 
favorite gestures: he put his right hand before his 
forehead as a shield and looked through his fingers 
at the reporters and particularly at the members 
of the assembly, by which means, contrary to the 
expression “to look through the fingers,’ he 
watched very sharply and attentively. On a 
narrow strip of paper was posted in tiny letters 
(economy!) the list of speakers. One eye watched 
the time that was posted above the table every now 
and then, to remind the speaker it was time to stop. 
At the same time the President quickly made a 
note of the conclusions that had seemed to him 
especially important in the course of the debate, 
in the form of resolutions. Generally, in addition 
to this, Lenin, to save time, sent the assembly 
members short memoranda in which he asked for 
some kind of information. These notes would 
represent a very voluminous and very interesting 
epistolary element in the technique of soviet legis- 
lation, but a large part of them has been destroyed 
as the answer was written on the reverse side of the 
note which the President then carefully destroyed. 
At a definite time Lenin read aloud the resolution 


[ 144 ] 





FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


points, that were always intentionally stiff and 
pedagogic—in order to emphasize, to bring into 
prominence, to exclude any changes; then the de- 
bates were either at an end, or entered the concrete 
channel of practical motions and supplements. 
Lenin’s “points” were thus the basis of the re- 
spective decree. 

Among other necessary attributes this work 
required a strong creative imagination. This word 
may seem inadmissible at the first glance, but 
nevertheless it expresses exactly the essence of the 
thing. The human imagination may be of many 
kinds: the constructive engineer needs it as much 
as the unrestrained fiction writer. One of the most 
precious varieties of imagination consists in the 
ability to picture people, things, and phenomena 
as they are in reality, even when one has never 
seen them. The application and combination of 
the whole experience of life and theoretical equip- 
ment of a man with separate small stopping places 
caught in passing, their working up, fusion, and 
completion according to definite formulated laws 
of analogy, in order thereby to make clear a definite 
phase of human life in its whole concreteness— 
that is imagination, which is indispensable for a 
lawmaker, a government worker, and a leader in 
the time of revolution. The strength of Lenin 


[145 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


lay, to a very important degree, in the strength 
of his realistic imagination. 

Lenin’s definiteness of purpose was always con- 
crete,—otherwise it would have belied its name. 
In the “Iskra,” I believe, Lenin for the first time 
expressed the thought, that in the complicated 
chain of political action one must always seek out 
the central link for the moment in question in 
order to seize it and give direction to the whole 
chain. Later, too, Lenin returned to this thought 
quite often, even to the same picture of the chain 
and the ring. ‘This method passed from the 
sphere of the conscious, as it were, into his un- 
consciousness and finally became second nature. 
In particularly critical moments, when it was a 
question of a very responsible or risky tactical 
change of position, Lenin put aside everything else 
less important that permitted postponement. This 
must by no means be understood in the sense that 
he had grasped the central problem in its main 
features only and ignored details. Quite the con- 
trary. He had before his eyes the problem that he 
considered could not be postponed, in all its con- 
creteness, took hold of it from all sides, studied the 
details, now and then even the secondary ones, 
and sought a point of attack in order to approach 
it anew and give force to it,—he recalled, ex- 
pounded, emphasized, controlled, and urged. But 


[ 146 ] 





FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


all was subordinated to the “link of the chain” 
which he regarded as decisive for the moment in 
question. He put aside, not only all that was at 
variance, directly or indirectly, with the central 
problem, but also that which might distract his 
attention and weaken his exertion. In particularly 
critical moments he was likewise deaf and blind to 
everything that had nothing to do with the ques- 
tion which held his entire interest. Merely the 
raising of other questions, neutral ones so to speak, 
he felt as a danger from which he instinctively 
retreated. 

When one critical step had been successfully 
overcome, Lenin would often exclaim for some 
cause or another: ‘But we have quite forgotten to 
do so and so. . . . We have made a mistake while 
we were entirely occupied with the main problem. 

.’ They often answered: ‘But this question 
came up and exactly this proposition was made, 
only you would not hear anything of it then.” 

“Yes, really?” he would reply. “I do not re- 
member at all.” 

Then he laughed slily and a little “consciously” 
and made a peculiar motion of the hand, character- 
istic of him, from above below, that seemed to 
mean: one cannot decide everything at the same 
time. This “defect” was only the reverse side of 
his faculty of the greatest inward mobilization of 


[ 147 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


all his forces, and exactly this faculty made him 
the greatest revolutionary of history. 

In Lenin’s theses about peace written in Janu- 
ary, 1918, he says: “For the success of socialism in 
Russia a certain period of time of at least a few 
months is necessary.” 

Now these words seem quite incomprehensible. 
Is it not a mistake? Are not years or decades 
meant? But no, itisno mistake. One could prob- 
ably find a number of other statements of Lenin of 
the same type. I remember very well that in the 
first period, at the sessions of the Council of 
People’s Commissars at Smolny, Ilyich repeatedly 
said that within a half year socialism would rule 
and that we would be the greatest state in the 
world. The Left Social Revolutionaries, and not 
alone they, raised their heads in question and sur- 
prise, regarded each other, but were silent. This 
was his system of inculcation. Lenin wanted to 
train everybody, from now on, to consider all ques- 
tions in the setting of their socialistic structure, not 
in the perspective of the “goal,” but of today and 
tomorrow. 

In this sharp change of position he seized the 
method so peculiar.to him, of emphasizing the 
extreme: Yesterday we said socialism is the goal; 
but today it is a question of so thinking, speaking, 
and acting that the rule of socialism will be 


[ 148 ] 





FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


guaranteed in a few months. Does that mean too 
that it should be only a pedagogical method? No, 
not that alone. To the pedagogic energy some- 
thing must be added: Lenin’s strong idealism, his 
intense will-power, that in the sudden changes of 
two epochs shortened the stopping places, and 
drew nearer to the definite ends. He believed in 
what he said. And this imaginative half-year 
respite for the development of socialism just as 
much represents a function of Lenin’s spirit as his 
realistic taking hold of every task of today. The 
deep and firm conviction of the strong possibilities 
of human development, for which one can and 
must pay any price whatsoever in sacrifices and 
suffering, was always the mainspring of Lenin’s 
mental structure. 

Under the most difficult circumstances, in the 
most wearing daily work, in the midst of com- 
missariat troubles and all others possible, sur- 
rounded by a bourgeois war, Lenin worked with 
the greatest care over the Soviet constitution, 
scrupulously harmonized minor practical req- 
uisites of the state apparatus with the problems 
of principle of a proletarian dictatorship in a land 
of peasants. 

The Constitution Commission decided for some 
reason or other to remodel Lenin’s ‘Declaration 
of the Rights of Producers” and bring it into 


[ 149 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


“accord” with the text of the constitution. When 
I came from the front to Moscow I received from 
the Commission, among other material, the outline 
of the transformed “declaration,” or at least a 
partofit. I familiarized myself with it in Lenin’s 
office, where only he and Sverdlof were present. 
They were doing the preparatory work for the 
Council of Soviets. 

“But why is the declaration to be changed?” 
I asked Sverdlof, who was the head of the Con- 
stitution Commission. 

Vladimir Ilyich raised his head with interest. 

“Well, the Commission has just discovered that 
the ‘declaration’ contains discrepancies with the 
constitution and inexact formulations,” Jakov 
Michailovich answered. 

“In my opinion that is nonsense,” I replied. 
“The declaration has already been accepted and 
has become an historical document—what sense is 
there in changing it?” 

“That is quite right,’ Vladimir I[lyich inter- 
rupted. “I too think they have taken up this 
question quite unnecessarily. Let the youth live 
unshaven and disheveled: be he what he may, he 
is still a scion of the revolution... he will 
hardly be better if you send him to the barber.” 

Sverdlof tried “dutifully” to stand by the 
decision of his Commission, but he soon agreed 


[150 ] 





FORMING THE GOVERNMENT 


with us. I realized that Vladimir Ilyich, who 
more than once had had to oppose propositions of 
the Constitution Commission, apparently did not 
wish to take up the struggle against a rearrange- 
ment of the “Declaration of the Rights of Pro- 
ducers,” whose author he was. However, he was 
delighted by the support of a “third person” who 
unexpectedly turned up at the last moment. We 
three decided not to change the “declaration” and 
the worthy youth was spared the barber. 

The study of the development of Soviet law- 
making in bringing into prominence its chief 
motives and turning points, in connection with the 
course of the revolution itself and the class re- 
lationships in it, presents a tremendously im- 
portant task, because the results of it for the pro- 
letariat of other countries can be and must be of 
the greatest practical significance. 

The collection of Soviet decrees forms, in a 
certain sense, a by no means unimportant part of 
the collected works of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. 


[151] 


THE CZECHO-SLOVAKS AND THE LEFT 
SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARIES 


“MHE early part of 1918 weighed heavily 
upon us. There were moments when one 
had the feeling that everything was slip- 

ping and snapping, that there was nothing to hold 

fast to, nothing to support oneself on. On the one 
side, it was quite clear that without the October 
revolution the country would long ago have 
rotted. But on the other hand, in the spring of 
1918 one asked the question unconsciously whether 
the life forces of the exhausted, shattered despair- 
ing land would last until the new régime was in 
the saddle. Provisions were not at hand. There 
was no army. The state apparatus was being put 
together. Conspiracies were festering everywhere. 

The Czecho-Slovak army stood on our soil as an 

independent power. We could offer almost no 

opposition to them. 

Once Vladimir Ilyich said to me in a particu- 
larly difficult hour of 1918, “Today a delegation 
of workmen came to me.*’ And at my words one 
of them said, ‘One sees that you too, Comrade 


*Unfortunately I cannot remember why the delegation had come. 


[ 152] 





THE CZECHO-SLOVAKS 


Lenin, take the side of the capitalists.’ You know 
that was the first time I have heard such words. I 
_ confess that I was disconcerted and did not know 
what to answer. If that was no malicious type, 
no Menshevik, then it is a disquieting symptom.” 

When Lenin related this episode he seemed 
more troubled and alarmed than later when the 
dismal news came from the front of the fall of 
Kazan or the immediate threatening of Peters- 
burg. And that too is comprehensible: Kazan 
and even Petersburg we can lose and win back. 
But the confidence of the workmen is the founda- 
tion capital of the party. 

“T have the impression,” I then said to Vladimir 
Ilyich, “that the country, after the fearfully severe 
illnesses that it has gone through, now needs better 
nourishment, rest, and care, to live on and recover; 
the slightest blow can overturn it now.” 

“T have the same impression,’ Vladimir 
Ilyich replied, ‘“‘a terrible poverty of blood! Every 
further blow is dangerous now.” _ 

However, history threatened to let the Czecho- 
Slovaks strike this dangerous blow. The Czecho- 
Slovak corps penetrated, without opposition, into 
the disorderly body of southeastern Russia and 
united with the Social Revolutionaries and other 
heroes of still whiter colors. Even though the 
Bolsheviki were already in power everywhere, 


aes.) 


OCTOBER, 1917 


still the structure was very loose in the country. 
That is not surprising. In reality the October 
revolution had only been carried through in 
Petrograd and Moscow. In the majority of the 
provincial cities the October, as well as the 
February, revolution, was accomplished by tele- 
graph. They came and went because it had al- 
ready happened thus in the capital. ‘The lax 
social milieu, the lack of opposition on the part of 
yesterday’s rulers, had, on the side of the revolu- 
tion too, a less compact body as a result. The 
entry of the Czecho-Slovaks modified the situation, 
at first, against us, finally, however, in our favor. 
The Whites had gained a military crystallization 
point and in answer to that there first began an 
actual revolutionary crystallizing of the Reds. 
It can be said that the Volga district only com- 
pleted its October revolution at the appearance 
of the Czecho-Slovaks. But it did not happen all 
at once. On July 3rd Vladimir Ilyich called 
me to the war commissariat. 

“Do you know what has happened?” he asked 
in the muffled voice that in him indicated ex- 
citement. 

“No, what is it?” 

“The Left Social Democrats have thrown a 
bomb at Mirbach. It is reported he is badly 


[154 ] 





THE CZECHO-SLOVAKS 


wounded. Come to the Kremlin, we must discuss 
rb 

A few minutes later I was in Lenin’s office. He 
told me the main circumstances and every mo- 
ment asked by telephone for new details. 

‘Nice stories, indeed,” I said, and digested the 
news which could not be called ordinary. “We 
cannot complain about a monotonous life.” 

“Ha,” laughed Lenin troubled, “that is the cus- 
tomary monstrous excess of the bourgeois .. .” 
—he said excess ironically—‘it is the position 
that Engels pictures as “the frenzied little bour- 
geois.”’ 

Again rapid telephone conversation, curt ques- 
tions and answers from the Commissariat of 
Foreign Affairs, from the All Russian Extraor- 
dinary Commission and other institutions. Lenin’s 
mind worked as always in critical moments 
on two planes simultaneously. As a Marxist 
he enriched his historical experience, and ap- 
praised with interest this new manifestation, this 
“excess” of bourgeois radicalism, while at the 
same time as leader of the revolution, he un- 
weariedly stretched the threads of information and 
controlled the practical steps. News came of a 
mutiny among the troops of the All Russian 
Extraordinary Commission. 

“It seems as though the Left Social Revolu- 


[155] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


tionaries would be the cherry stone that we are 
destined to stumble over... .” 

“T have thought that very thing,” Lenin an- 
swered. “The fate of the wavering bourgeoisie 
lies in that very point; they come to the help of the 
White Guard like a cherry stone. . . . Now at 
any price we must influence the character of the 
German report to Berlin. The motive for mili- 
tary interference is quite sufficient, particularly 
when you take into consideration that Mirbach 
has continually reported that we are weak and a 
single blow would suffice. . . .”” Soon after Sverd- 
lof entered. He was the same as always. 

“Now,” he said, as he greeted me laughingly, 
“now we must again change from a Council of 
People’s Commissars to a Revolutionary Com- 
mittee.” 

Lenin in the meantime received further infor- 
mation. I do not remember whether it was at 
this moment or later that the news came that Mir- 
bach was dead. We had to go to the Embassy to 
express our “sympathy.” It was decided that 
Lenin, Sverdlof, and, I think, Tchitcherin should 
go. ‘There was a question as to whether I should 
go too. After a hasty exchange of views I was 
absolved from this. 

‘What ought we to say there,” said Vladimir 
Ilyich shaking his head, “I have already talked 


[ 156 ] 





THE CZECHO-SLOVAKS 


with Radek about it. I wanted to say ‘Mitleid,’ 
but we must say ‘Bezleid.’” } 

He laughed a little, put on his coat and said 
firmly to Sverdlof: “Let us go.” His face 
changed and became stone-gray. ‘The drive to the 
Hohenzollern Embassy, to offer condolences over 
the death of Count Mirbach, was not an easy thing 
for Ilyich. As an inward experience it was 
probably one of the most difficult moments of his 
life. 

In such days one learns to know men. Sverdlof 
was really incomparable—confident, courageous, 
firm, alert—the best type of Bolsheviki. In these 
difficult months Lenin learned to know and 
appreciate Sverdlof. Often Vladimir Ilyich 
summoned Sverdlof to suggest to him this or that 
speedy measure, and mostly received the answer: 
“Already!” ‘That is to say, the measure had al- 
ready been attended to. We often joked about it 
and said: “Sverdlof will probably again say 
‘already!’ ” 

“And at first we were opposed to his entrance 
into the Central Committee,” Lenin once said to 
me. “How falsely we can judge a man! There 
were regular disputes about it; but in the Congress 
we were corrected from below, and as it turned 
out with perfect right.” 


*“Mitleid” (sympathy) and “Beileid” (condolence) are German in 
the original.—Translator, 
[157] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


The move on the part of the Left Social Revolu- 
tionaries deprived us of political comrades and 
allies, but in the end it did not weaken us but 
strengthened us. Our party united more firmly. 
In the institutions and the army the influence of 
the communistic groups increased. The policy 
of the government was surer. 

The move of the Czecho-Slovaks undoubtedly 
contributed to this also, as it roused the party from 
the depressed mood it had been in since the peace 
of Brest-Litovsk. ‘The period of party mobiliza- 
tion for the east front began. Vladimir Ilyich and 
I dismissed the first group to which the Left 
Social Revolutionaries still belonged. Here was 
already noticeable, even though it was somewhat 
indefinite, the organization of the future “political 
divisions.” Meanwhile, the news from the Volga 
was more unfavorable. Muravief’s treachery and 
the move of the Left Social Revolutionaries 
brought for the time new confusion at the east 
front. The danger suddenly became more acute. 
But now a radical change was brought about. 

“We must mobilize everybody and everything 
and send them to the front,” said Lenin. “We 
must take from behind the ‘veil’ all troops capable 
of fighting and throw them on the Volga.” 

I remember that the thin cordon of troops 


[158 ] 





THE CZECHO-SLOVAKS 


opposing the German occupation district in the 
west was called the ‘‘veil.” 

“And the Germans?” they said to Lenin. 

“The Germans will not move, they have other 
things to do, and they are themselves interested 
that we should finish with the Czecho-Slovaks.” 

This plan was adopted and supplied the raw 
material for the future Fifth Army. Then my 
journey to the Volga was also decided upon. I 
busied myself in forming a train, which was no 
simple thing at that time. Vladimir Ilyich agreed 
to everything, wrote me short notes, and telephoned 
me unceasingly. 

“Have you a strong automobiler Take one 
from the Kremlin garage.” 

And half an hour later: “Are you taking an 
aviator? You should do it in any case.” 

“There are aviators with the army,” I replied. 
“In case of need I will use them.” 

And half an hour later: “But I mean that you 
should have an aviator with the train. You do 
not know what might happen.” Etc., etc. 

The motley pieced-together regiments and 
divisions consisted chiefly of disorganized soldiers 
of the old army, who scattered most lamentably at 
the first conflict with the Czecho-Slovaks. 

“In order to overcome this dangerous lack of 
resistance we need absolutely strong shock di- 


[159 | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


visions of Communists and especially men fit for 
fighting,” I said to Lenin before my departure for 
the east front. ‘‘We must force them to fight. If 
we wait until the peasant comes to his senses per- 
haps it will be too late.” 

“Naturally, that is right,” he replied, “I am 
only afraid that even the shock divisions will not 
display the necessary firmness. The Russian man 
is tender-hearted, and the decided measures of the 
revolutionary terro¢ do not interest him. But try 
we must.” 

The news of the attack on Lenin and the as- 
sassination of Urizky reached me at Swijaschsk. 
In these tragic days the revolution suffered an in- 
ward change. Its “good nature” gave way. The 
party steel received its last tempering. Firmness 
and, when necessary, ruthlessness grew out of it. 
At the front the political divisions struggled hand 
in hand with the shock troops and the tribunals to 
develop the power of the young army. 

The change was evident at once. We took back 
Kazan and Simbirsk. In Kazan I received a 
despatch about the first victory at the Volga from 
Lenin who had recovered from the attack upon 
him. 

When I reached Moscow soon after, I went with 
Sverdlof to Gorky to see Vladimir Ilyich, who 
recovered quickly, but had not yet returned to 

[ 160 ] 





THE CZECHO-SLOVAKS 


Moscow to his work. We found him in excellent 
spirits. He asked at once about the organization 
of the army, its mood, the rdle of the communists, 
the increase of discipline and he repeated gayly, 
“Yes; that is good, that is excellent. The firmness 
of the army will prove effectual to the whole land 
at once by the increase of discipline and respon- 
BIDLItY or oust 

In the autumn the great revolution really oc- 
curred. Of the pallid weakness that the spring 
months had shown there was no longer a trace. 
Something had taken its place, had grown 
stronger, and it is remarkable that this time it was 
not a new pause for breath that had saved the 
revolution but, on the contrary, a new acute danger 
which had released the subterranean waves of 
revolutionary energy in the proletariat. 

When Sverdlof and I entered the automobile, 
Lenin stood on the balcony calm and happy. I 
remember seeing him as calm as this only on the 
25th of October, as he heard in Smolny of the first 
military results of the rising. | 

The Left Social Revolutionaries we had politi- 
cally liquidated. The Volga was cleared. Lenin 
had recovered from his wounds; the revolution 
was strong in men. 


[ 161 ] 


LENIN ON THE PLATFORM 


FTER the October revolution photog- 
raphers and cinema-operators took Lenin 
more than once. His voice is recorded 

on phonograph discs. His speeches were reported 
and printed. Thus all the elements of Vladimir 
Ilyich are in existence. But only the elements. 
The living personality consists'in their inimitable 
and steadily dynamic combination. 

When I try mentally with fresh eye and fresh 
ear to see and hear Lenin on the platform, as I did 
the first time, I see a strong and supple figure of 
medium height, and hear a smooth, rapid, un- 
interrupted voice, rather striking, almost without 
pauses, and at first without special emphasis. 

The first sentences are usually general, the tone 
is a test one, the whole figure has not yet found 
its balance, the gestures are incomplete. The gaze 
is turned inward; the face is sullen and even vexed. 
His mind is seeking an approach to the audience. 
This introductory period lasts a long or short time 
according to the audience, the theme, and the 
mood of the speaker. But all at once he reaches 
the kernel of the matter. The theme becomes 


[ 162 ] 





LENIN ON THE PLATFORM 


clear. The speaker bends the upper part of his 
body, and sticks his middle finger in the edge of 
his vest. As a result of this double movement his 
head and hands stand out. The head in itself does 
not seem large on the small but sturdy body, well 
formed and rhythmical. But his brow and the 
bare, arched forehead are powerful. His arms 
are very active but without exaggeration and 
nervousness. The hand is broad, short-fingered, 
“plebeian,” strong. It has the same traits of con- 
fidence and virile good nature as the whole figure. 
One sees that best when the speaker is stirred on 
feeling an opponent’s strategem, or has success- 
fully set a trap for him. Then Lenin’s eyes look 
forth from their deep-set sockets as they are rep- 
resented significantly in an excellent photograph 
taken in 1919. Even the indifferent listener is 
startled when he catches this look and waits to 
see what will happen. The edges of his cheek 
bones glow and soften in these moments of intense 
mental concentration, back of which one detects 
keen knowledge of people, relations, and situa- 
tions. The lower part of the face with its reddish 
gray beard is almost in shadow. The voice loses 
its hardness, becomes flexible and soft, and in many 
moments astutely insinuating. 

But now the speaker introduces an adversary’s 
possible objection or a malicious quotation from 


[ 163 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


an enemy’s article. Before he states the hostile 
idea he makes it clear that the objection is un- 
founded, superficial, or false. He takes his fingers 
from his vest, throws his body back gently, and 
takes a few steps backward as though to clear a 
space for the attack, shrugs his sturdy shoulders 
half ironically, half in pretended despair, and 
stretches his hands with his fingers wide spread. 
Condemnation, ridicule, or confusion of his ad- 
versary, according to the adversary and the event 
—always precede his refutation. ‘The listener 
knows in advance, as it were, what proofs to expect 
and what tone his mental attitude will assume. 
Then begins his logical attack. The left hand is 
either thrust into his vest anew, or more often in 
his trousers pocket; the right accompanies the logic 
of his thought and gives it its rhythm. Where it 
is necessary the left helps. The speaker leans to- 
ward his audience, goes to the edge of the plat- 
form, bends forward and elaborates with rounded 
motions his own word material. That means that 
he has reached the central thought, the main point 
of the whole speech. 

If there are adversaries in the audience, critical 
or hostile cries arise from time to time. In nine 
out of ten cases they are unanswered. The speaker 
says what he considers necessary, he speaks to those 
for whom what is said is necessary, and says it as 


[ 164 ] 





LENIN ON THE PLATFORM 


he considers it necessary. He does not like to be 
interrupted by casual objections. Adroit readiness 
to fight does not suit his concentration. After 
hostile objections his voice becomes harder, his 
speech more compact and impressive, his train of 
thought sharper, his gestures harsher. He only 
notices a hostile call in case this responds to the 
general course of his thoughts and helps him to 
come to the necessary conclusion more quickly. 
But then his answers are apt to be quite unexpected 
in their deadly simplicity. He reveals the situa- 
tion unmercifully exactly where they had expected 
that he would veil it. The Mensheviki had that 
experience more than once in the early periods of 
the revolution when the accusations of the harm to 
democracy had all their freshness. 

“Our newspapers are shut down.” 

“Naturally! But unfortunately not yet all. 
Soon they will be shut down entirely.” (Stormy 
applause.) The dictatorship of the proletariat 
will put a complete end to this disgraceful sale 
of bourgeois opium.” (Stormy applause.) 

The speaker draws himself up. Both hands are 
in his pockets. Here is not a trace of pose, the 
voice shows no rhetorical modulation, the whole 
figure, the position of his head with his lips 
pressed together, the cheek bones, and the slightly 
hoarse tone of his voice, express firm confidence in 


[ 165 | 


OCTOBER, 1917 


his justice and truth. “If you wish to strike, well, 
we will take good care of it.” 

When the speaker attacks some one of his own 
people and not an enemy, one detects it in both his 
bearing and tone. Even the most violent attacks 
will in the main only bring one ‘‘to reason.””’ Now 
and then the speaker’s voice breaks on a high note; 
that happens when, in his zeal, he convinces one 
of his own people, disconcerts him, and proves 
that the opponent of this question had given it no 
thought and that the grounds for his objections 
were futile. While making these protestations 
his voice occasionally reaches the falsetto and 
breaks off, by which even the most angry tirade 
assumes a tinge of good nature. 

The speaker has thought out his whole train of 
thought to the end, to the last practical result, but 
only the train, not the presentation and form, with 
the exception at the most of some particularly 
terse, pertinent, forcible expressions and catch 
phrases which then become the “loose change” of 
the political life of the party and the country. 
The phraseology is generally unpliant, one phrase ~ 
above another or inverted and joined to another. 
Such a construction is a heavy affliction for 
stenographers, and later for the editors. But 
through these unpliant sentences the intense 
powerful thought forces its way. 


[ 166 | 





LENIN ON THE PLATFORM 


But is the speaker really a Marxist of broad 
training, a theoretician of administration, and a 
man of enormous learning? Does it not seem, at 
least at some moments, as though an extraordinary 
auto-dictator were speaking, one who had reached 
all these results by his own thinking, who had first 
created it all in his own brain, in his own way, 
without scientific apparatus, without scientific 
terminology, and who now presents it in his wayr 
What is the reason for this? Because the speaker 
has pondered over his thought not for himself 
alone, but also for the mass, has filtered his train 
of thought in their experience, in order to free his 
statement from all the theoretical tools he himself 
had used when he first took up the question. 

Now and then, moreover, the speaker raises the 
ladder of his thoughts too hastily and jumps up 
two or three steps at once; this is the case if the 
conclusion seems to him very clear and practically 
close at hand, and he wants to bring his hearers to 
it as quickly as possible. But he detects at once 
that the audience is not with him, that the connec- 
tion with his hearers is broken off. Then he con- 
strains himself at once, springs down at one bound 
and begins the ascent anew, but with a calm and 
more moderate step. Even his voice is different, 
freed from all superfluous effort, therefore with 
the compelling force of conviction. The con- 


[ 167 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


struction of his speech naturally suffers from this 
backward leap. But is the speech made for its 
construction? Is any other logic of value in a 
speech but that which compels to actionr 

And when the speaker has reached his con- 
clusion the second time and takes his hearers with 
him without exception, one detects in the hall the 
grateful pleasure that comes from the satisfied 
exertion of collective thinking. Now it only re- 
mains to nail the conclusion two or three times 
so that it holds well, and to give it a simple, clear, 
and picturesque expression so that it may more 
easily be impressed on the memory, and then one 
can give oneself and the others a breathing space, 
can joke and laugh, so that during this time the 
collective thinking can better absorb its new ac- 
quisition. 

Lenin’s oratorical humor was as simple as his 
other artifices, if one can speak of artifices at all 
here. There are no self-satisfied attempts to be 
Witty, nor even puns, in Lenin’s speeches. But 
energetic joking, intelligible to the masses, 
popular in the true sense of the word. If the 
political situation is not too alarming, if the ma-. 
jority of the listeners are “his own,” then the 
speaker is not above making a joke. The audi- 
ence accepts gratefully the crafty, naive, witty re- 
mark, a good-natured, merciless characterization, 


[ 168 ] 





LENIN ON THE PLATFORM 


because it sees that here it is not merely a question 
of fine words but that there is something back of 
it, that all serves for one and the same goal. 

When the speaker makes a joke, the lower part 
of his face projects more strongly, especially the 
mouth, which can laugh contagiously. The lines 
of his forehead and head grow softer, the eyes no 
longer glitter, but beam cheerfully, the strain of 
his bold mind is relieved by happiness and 
friendliness. 

The leading feature in Lenin’s speeches, as in 
his whole work, is his directness of purpose. He 
does not build up his speech but guides it to a def- 
inite, substantial conclusion. He approaches his 
listeners in different ways: he explains, convinces, 
disconcerts, jokes, convinces again, and explains 
again. What holds his speech together is not a 
formal plan, but a clear aim formed for today, 
that pierces the consciousness of his listeners like 
asplinter. His humor, too, is subordinated to that. 
His joking is utilitarian. A drastic catch phrase 
has its practical significance: some it incites, others 
it curbs. Hence come dozens of winged words, 
that have long been common property of the coun- 
try... However, before the speaker uses such a 


* Trotzky introduces here a number of Lenin’s word coinages that 
can scarcely be translated. Such as: “Peredychka,” the pauses in 
breathing. assigned as a cause in signing the peace of Brest; 
“Smytchka,” the union of state and land; “Komtschvantvo,” the con- 
ceitedness of individual communists, ete.—Translator. 


[ 169 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


catch phrase, he describes some curves, in order to 
find just the right point. When he has found it, 
he applies his nail, measures it with his eye, strikes 
a mighty blow with his hammer on the head of 
the nail, once, twice, ten times, until the nail is 
firm, so that it would be very hard to draw it out 
if it were no longer needed. Then Lenin again 
strikes the nail with a witty remark from left and 
right to loosen it, until he has drawn it out and 
thrown it in the old iron of the archives—to the 
great sorrow of all who had become accustomed to 
the nail. 

And now the speech approaches its end. The 
separate points are established, the conclusions 
firmly drawn. The speaker looks like an exhausted 
workman who has finished his work. From time 
to time he passes his hand over his bald head with 
its drops of perspiration. His voice has sunk as a 
camp fire dies away. He is about to close. But 
one looks in vain for an ascending finale to crown 
the speech and without which ostensibly one can- 
not leave the platform. Others cannot, but Lenin 
can. There is no rhetorical winding up with him: 
he finishes the work and makes a point. “If we 
understand this, if we act thus, then we shall surely 
conquer’ is a not unusual concluding sentence. 
Or: “One must strive for that, not in words, but 
in deeds.” Or now and then more simple: “That 


[ 170 ] 





LENIN ON THE PLATFORM 


is all that I wanted to say to you,” nothing more. 
And this conclusion, which entirely corresponds to 
the nature of Lenin’s eloquence and the nature of 
Lenin himself, by no means cools his audience. 
On the contrary, after just such a conclusion, 
“without effect,” “pale,” the listeners grasp once 
more, as if with a single blaze of consciousness, 
all that Lenin had given them in his speech, and 
the audience breaks out into stormy, grateful, en- 
thusiastic applause. 

But Lenin has already gathered up his papers 
and quickly leaves the speaker’s desk in order to 
escape the inevitable. His head drawn to his 
shoulders, his chin down, his eyes concealed by his 
brows, his mustache bristles angrily on the upper 
lip puckered in annoyance. The roaring hand- 
clapping grows, and hurls wave upon wave... 
mionmelivery .. Wenin).\..) Leader csi Pbyeen 

.’ There in the glare of the electric lights the 
unique head stands out, surrounded on all sides by 
enormous waves of enthusiasm. And when it 
seems that the storm has reached its height, all at 
once, through the confusion, tumult and clapping, 
like a siren in a storm, a youthful voice, strained 
and enthusiastic, calls out: “Long live Ilyich!” 
And from the inmost quivering depths of solidar- 
ity, love and enthusiasm, rises the general cry, 
making the arches ring, “Long live Lenin!” 


[171 ] 


THE PHILISTINE AND THE 
REVOLUTIONARY 


N one of the many books devoted to Lenin, I 
| came upon an article by the English author 

Wells under the title of “The Visionary of 
the Kremlin.” ‘There is an editorial note that ex- 
plains: “Even such progressive men as Wells had 
not understood the proletarian revolution going 
on in Russia.” One would think this was not a 
sufficient reason to put Wells’s article in a book 
devoted to the leader of this revolution. But it 
is not worth while criticizing; I personally at 


least have read some pages of Wells not without 7 


interest, for which to be sure the author, as is evi- 
dent from what follows, is quite innocent. 

I have vividly before my eyes the time that 
Wells visited Moscow. It was the hungry and 
cold winter of 1920-21. There was a restless fore- 
boding in the air of the difficulties that the spring 
was to bring. Starving Moscow lay buried deep 
in snow. Our policy was on the eve of a sharp 
change. I remember very well the impression 
Vladimir Ilyich carried away from his conversa- 
tion with Wells. 7 


[172 ] 





THE PHILISTINE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY 


“What a bourgeois he is! He is a Philistine!” 
he repeated, and raised both hands above the table, 
laughed and sighed, as was characteristic of him 
when he felt a kind of inner shame for another 
man. 

“Ah, what a Philistine,” he began the conver- 
sation anew. Our conversation took place before 
the opening of the session of the Political Bureau 
and was limited essentially to this repeated short 
characterization of Wells. But that was quite 
enough. I confess that I have read little of Wells, 
and have never seen him. But the English draw- 
ing-room Socialist, Fabian, belles-lettrist on 
visionary and Utopian themes, who traveled here 
to see for himself the communistic experiments,— 
this picture I could form with sufficient clearness. 
And Lenin’s exclamation, especially his tone, sup- 
plied me with the rest. 

Wells’s article, that in some inaccountable way 
got into this book of Lenin, has not only brought 
back to my memory Lenin’s exclamation, but has 
filled it with vivid meaning. For if there is hardly 
a trace of Lenin in Wells’s article, Wells him- 
self, just as he is, is contained in it. 

Let us begin with the complaint with which 
Wells introduces himself; he had to, just think of 
it, run about a long time to get an interview with 
Lenin, which “provoked” him (Wells) extremely. 


[i073] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


Had Lenin sent for Wells? Had he bound him- 
self to receive hime Did Lenin have any super- 
abundance of time? On the contrary, in those 
very difficult days every moment of his time was 
occupied; it would not have been easy to find a 
free hour to receive Wells. Even a foreigner 
should have had no difficulty in understanding 
that. But the whole trouble was that Wells, as a 
cultivated foreigner and—for all his “Socialism” 
—a stock conservative Englishman of imperialistic 
mold, was completely obsessed with the conviction 
that he was conferring great honor upon this bar- 
baric land and its ruler by his visit. Wells’s arti- 
cle from the first to the last lines exhales this un- 
justifiable self-sufficiency. 

The characterization of Lenin begins, as one 
might expect, with revelation. Lenin, think of it, 
is “by no means a man of letters.” Who in fact 
could decide this question if not the professional 
man of letters, Wells? “Short, uncouth pamphlets 
that appear in Moscow with his (Lenin’s) signa- 
ture, full of false ideas about the psychology of 
the workmen of the west . .. give little expres- 
sion to the actual character of Lenin’s mind.” The 
honorable gentleman naturally does not know that 
Lenin has written a number of great and funda- 
mental books on the agrarian question, on theo- 
retic economics, sociology, and philosophy. Wells 


[ 174 ] 





THE PHILISTINE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY 


knows only “short, uncouth pamphlets” and even 
here he remarks that “they only appear with 
Lenin’s signature,” that is, he implies that others 
have written them. The actual “character of 
Lenin’s mind” reveals itself then, not in the dozens 
of volumes he has written, but in that one hour’s 
conversation into which the extremely enlightened 
visitor from Great Britain deigned to enter. 

From Wells one might at least expect an inter- 
esting description of the outward impression of 
Lenin, and for the sake of a single well-observed 
small trait we were ready to pardon him for all 
his Fabian absurdities. But there is nothing of 
that to be found in the article. “Lenin has an 
agreeable brunette countenance whose expression 
changes constantly and a lively smile. . . . Lenin 
is not much like his photographs.” ‘During our 
conversation he gesticulated a little.” In these 
banalities Wells does not differ from the assistant 
reporter of a capitalistic newspaper. Moreover, he 
discovers that Lenin’s forehead reminds him of 
Arthur Balfour’s long, rather unsymmetrical head 
and, on the whole, Lenin is a “little man”; “when 
he sits on the edge of his chair, his feet scarcely 
touch the ground.” 

As far as Arthur Balfour’s head is concerned, 
we have nothing to say about this worthy object 
and are glad to believe it is long. But in all the 


[175 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


rest, what shocking inaccuracy! Lenin was red- 
dish blond; in no case can he be described as 
brunette. He was of medium height, perhaps a 
little less; but that he gave the impression of a 
“little man” and hardly touched the floor with his 
feet, that could only be the opinion of Wells, who 
had come with the consciousness of a civilized 
Gulliver into the land of the northern Com- 
munistic Lilliputians. 

In addition, Wells remarks that in the pauses 
of conversation Lenin had the habit of covering 
his eyes with his hand. ‘Perhaps that is due to 
some defect of sight,” says the ingenious man of 
letters. We know these gestures. They were in 
evidence when Lenin had with him a new man 
who was unknown to him; with his hand on his 
forehead like a shield, he looked through his fin- 
gers hastily at the visitor. The “defect” of Lenin’s 
sight was that he looked through his interviewer 
that way, saw his pompous self-satisfaction, his 
narrowness, his civilized haughtiness and his 
civilized ignorance, and when he had taken in this 
picture, shook his head a long time and said: 
“What a Philistine! What a monstrous little 
bourgeois!” 

Comrade Rothstein was present at this confer- 
ence and Wells made the discovery in passing that 
his presence is “characteristic of the present state 


[ 176 ] 





THE PHILISTINE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY 


of affairs in Russia.” Rothstein, by order of the 
People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, con- 
trolled Lenin on account of his extreme frankness 
and his fantastic imprudence. What can one say 
to this priceless observation? When Wells en- 
tered the Kremlin he brought with him in his 
consciousness the whole fog of international bour- 
geois information and discovered with his keen 
eye—that naturally had no “defect’”—in Lenin’s 
office what he had fished out of the “Times” be- 
forehand or from some other reservoir of respect- 
able and ironed-out gossip. 

But what did the conversation really consist of? 
In regard to this we learn from Wells quite hope- 
less commonplaces that prove how poorly and 
wretchedly Lenin’s thoughts are reflected in an- 
other mind whose symmetry in other respects we 
have no cause to doubt. 

Wells had come in the belief that “he would 
have to dispute with a convinced Marxist doc- 
trinaire, but nothing of the kind was the case.” 
That does not surprise us. We already know that 
the “reality” of Lenin’s mind did not reveal itself 
in his political and literary activity of more than 
thirty years, but in his conversation with the Eng- 
lish Philistine. 

“T have been told,’ Wells goes on, “that Lenin 
loves to advise, but he has not done that with me.” 


77) 


OCTOBER, 1917 


How can one in fact advise a gentleman who is 
sustained by such self-consciousness? ‘That Lenin 
loved to advise is, besides, not true. It is true that 
Lenin understood how to speak very instructively. 
But he only did it when he was of the opinion that 
his fellow conversationalist was ready to learn 
something. In such cases he spared neither time 
nor trouble. But in the presence of the magnifi- 
cent Gulliver whom the favor of fate had brought 
to the office of the “little man,” Lenin must have 
come to a firm conviction, after two or three min- 
utes, somewhat like the inscription over the en- 
trance into Dante’s hell: ‘All hope abandon!” 
The conversation touched upon large cities. 
Wells had decided the first time he was in Russia 
—as he declared—that the exterior of a city is de- 
termined by the trade in its shops and markets. 
He shared this discovery with his fellow conver- 
sationalist. Lenin “added” that a city under com- 
munism would grow considerably smaller in ex- 
tent; Wells “pointed out” to Lenin that the reno- 
vation of the cities would be a gigantic task and 
that many of the enormous buildings of Peters- 
burg would only retain their significance as his- 
toric monuments. Lenin also agreed with this in- 
comparable commonplace of Wells. “I had the 
impression,” the latter added, “that it was agree- 
able to him to talk with a man who understood the 


[ 178 ] 





THE PHILISTINE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY 


inevitable consequences of collectivism which had 
escaped the understanding of many of his own 
young men.” There is the best gauge for Wells’s 
niveau. He considers the discovery, that under 
communism the present huge concentrated cities 
will disappear and many of the present capitalistic 
architectural monsters will retain their signifi- 
cance only as historic monuments (so far as they 
are spared the honor of destruction), a fruit of 
his extraordinary penetration. How could the 
poor communist (“the wearisome fanatics of the 
class struggle,” as Wells describes them) make 
such discoveries, which besides are already de- 
scribed in a popular commentary on the old pro- 
gram of German Social Democracy, without men- 
tioning that the classical Utopians knew this 
already? 

I hope that now it will be understood why Wells 
“did not notice particularly,” in the course of his 
conversation, that laugh of Lenin of which he had 
heard so much. Lenin was not in a mood to laugh. 
I am even afraid that his jaw expressed something 
quite different from laughter. But his flexible and 
clever hand did him the necessary service, which it 
always understood opportunely, of concealing from 
his interviewer, so occupied with himself, the ir- 
ritation of an impolite yawn. As we have already 
heard, Lenin did not advise Wells, and for reasons 


[ 179 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


that we fully understand. Therefore Wells ad- 
vised Lenin the more forcibly. He brought to him 
the quite new thought that for the success of so- 
cialism it is “necessary to reorganize not only the 
material side of life but also the psychology of 
the whole people.”’ He pointed out to Lenin that 
“the Russians are by nature individualists and 
traders.” He declared to him that communism 
was acting “too hastily” and was destroying be- 
fore it could build up, etc., always in the same 
sense. 

“That brought us to the main point,’ Wells 
says, ‘‘where our views diverged, to the difference 
between evolutionary collectivism and Marxism.” 
Under evolutionary collectivism we have the 
Fabian brew of liberalism, philanthropy, social 
legislation, and Sunday lectures about a better 
future. Wells himself formulates the nature of 
his evolutionary collectivism as follows: ‘I be- 
lieve that by a definite system of education for all 
society the existing capitalistic system can be civ- 
ilized and transformed into a collective one.” 
Wells does not explain, however, who is actually 
to carry out “‘the definite system of education” and 
on whom it is to be carried out: The Lords with 
the high foreheads on the English proletariat, or 
the other way round, the English proletariat on 
the heads of the Lords? Oh, no, everything except 

[ 180 ] 





THE PHILISTINE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY 


that. For what purpose are the enlightened 
Fabians there, the people of intelligence, of un- 
selfish imagination, the gentlemen and ladies, Mr. 
Wells and Mrs. Snowden, if they do not civilize 
capitalistic society by a definite and tedious use 
of what lies hidden in their own craniums and 
transform it into a collective one by so reasonable 
and happy a gradation that even the royal dynasty 
of Great Britain notices nothing whatever? 

All this Wells laid down, and all this Lenin lis- 
tened to. “For me,” Wells remarked graciously, 
“it was really a recreation (!) to talk with this 
unusual little man.” 

And for Lenin?P—Oh, long suffering Ilyich! 
He probably permitted several very expressive 
and strong Russian words to pass through his mind. 
He did not translate them aloud in English and 
apparently not only because his English vocabu- 
lary would not have reached nearly so far but also 
for reasons of politeness. Ilyich was very polite. 
But finally he could no longer confine himself to 
this polite silence. “He was compelled,” Wells re- 
ported, “to answer me and declared that capital- 
ism of today is incurably greedy and destructive, 
and that it cannot be taught.” Lenin referred to 
a number of facts contained in the new book of 
Monais: that capitalism had destroyed the Eng- 
lish national docks, had prevented a suitable profit 


[ 181 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


of the coal mines, etc. Ilyich knew the language 
of facts and figures. 

“T confess,” Wells concludes unexpectedly, “it 
was very difficult for me to debate with him.” 
What does that meanP Can this be the begirning 
of a capitulation of evolutionary collectivism to 
the logic of Marxism? No, no, “all hope aban- 
don.” This statement, at first unexpected, is by 
no means accidental, but belongs to the system and 
consequently bears a Fabian evolutionary peda- 
gogic character. It is intended for the English 
capitalists, bankers, Lords, and their ministers. 
Wells says to them: Look, your conduct is so bad, 
so destructive and selfish, that in a discussion with 
the visionary of the Kremlin it was very difficult 
for me to justify the principles of my evolutionary 
collectivism. ‘Think it over, complete each day 
the Fabian washings, become civilized, take the 
road of progress. Thus Wells’s troubled admis- 
sion is not the beginning of self-criticism but only 
the continuation of that educative work of cap- 
italistic society that has come out of the imperial- 
istic war and the Versailles Peace so perfected, so 
moralized, and so fabianized. 

With condescending sympathy Wells remarks, 
“Lenin’s faith in his cause is boundless.” There 
is nothing to be said against that. Lack of faith 
in his cause was not to be found in Lenin. What is 


f 182 ] 





THE PHILISTINE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY 


right must remain right. This faith gave him, 
among. other things, the patience, in those desper- 
ate months of blockade, to converse with every 
foreigner who even indirectly was able to connect 
Russia and the west. That was Lenin’s conversa- 
tion with Wells. On the other hand, he talked 
quite, quite differently with the English workmen 
who came to him. With them he had active rela- 
tions. Here he taught and learned. The inter- 
view with Wells, on the contrary, bore a half 
constrained and diplomatic character. ‘Our con- 
versation ended undecidedly,” the author says. In 
other words: the game between evolutionary col- 
lectivism and Marxism ended this time in a draw. 
Wells went back to Great Britain, and Lenin re- 
mained in the Kremlin. Wells wrote a foolish 
series of articles for the bourgeois public, while 
Lenin, shaking his head, repeated, “That is a little 
bourgeois! Aye, aye, what a Philistine!” 


You may perhaps ask why now, after almost 
four years, I dwell on so insignificant an article 
of Wells. The fact that it met with a good recep- 
tion in one of the books devoted to Lenin’s death 
is not enough. It is also not enough justification 
that I wrote these lines in Suchum during my con- 
valescence. No, I have more important reasons. 
At the present moment Wells’s party holds the 


[ 183 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


power in England with the enlightened represen- 
tatives of evolutionary collectivism at the head. 
And I find—I believe not entirely without reason 
—that Wells’s lines devoted to Lenin will reveal 
to us, perhaps better than many other things, the 
soul of the leading class of the English Labor 
Party; in the long run Wells is not the worst 
among them. How terribly these men have been 
outdistanced under their heavy burden of bour- 
geois prejudices! Their arrogance, the late-reflex 
of the great historical role of the English bour- 
geoisie, does not permit them to put themselves 
into the life of other peoples—in new ideas, in the 
historical process that goes on above their heads. 
As narrow routinists and empiricists along with 
bourgeois public opinion these gentlemen spread 
themselves and their prejudices over the entire 
world and end by noticing nothing but themselves. 

Lenin had lived in all countries of Europe, he 
mastered foreign languages, he read, studied, went 
into them deeply; he compared and generalized. 
Even when he stood at the head of a great revo- 
lutionary country he let no opportunity pass to 
take advice scrupulously and attentively, to collect 
information and experience. He never wearied 
of following the life of the entire world. He 
spoke freely and read German, French, and Eng- 
lish, and read Italian. In the last years of his 


[ 184 ] 





THE PHILISTINE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY 


life, overwhelmed with work, at the sessions of the 
Political Bureau he quietly studied Czech gram- 
mar, in order to get a direct feeling for the work- 
men’s movement in Czecho-Slovakia; we “caught” 
him at it now and then. He laughed in some em- 
barrassment and apologized. In comparison with 
him Wells embodies that race of ostensibly edu- 
cated, narrow bourgeois, who look but see nothing, 
and believe they have nothing more to learn, as 
they are sufficiently provided with their inherited 
prejudices. And Mr. Macdonald, who is a more 
settled and gloomy puritanical variety of the same 
type, calms bourgeois public opinion thus: 
We have fought with Moscow and conquered 
Moscow. 

Conquered Moscow?’ Yes, they are in reality 
poor “little men,” even though they have grown 
large. They do not know today, after all that 
has passed, anything about their own tomorrow. 
The Liberal and Conservative leaders make short 
work of the “revolutionary” socialistic pedants 
who are in power; they compromise them and 
knowingly prepare their fall, their fall not only 
as ministers, but their political fall. At the same 
time they prepare—though it is less a matter of 
common knowledge—the seizure of power by the 
English Marxists. Yes, indeed, the Marxists, 
“the wearisome fanatics of the class struggle.” 


[185 ] 


OCTOBER, 1917 


For the English social revolution, too, follows the 
laws that Marx has laid down. 

With the wit peculiar to him—heavy as a pud- 
ding—Wells once threatened to take a scissors and 
trim Marx’s “doctrinaire’ mane and beard, to 
anglicize, to respectabilize and fabianize him. 
But nothing has come of this project. And noth- 
ing will come of it. Marx will remain Marx, as 
Lenin has remained Lenin, after Wells had pain- 
fully shaved him for a whole hour with a dull 
knife. And we have the boldness to prophesy 
that in a not too distant future in London, for ex- 
ample in Trafalgar Square, two bronze figures 
will be erected side by side: Kar] Marx and Vlad- 
imir Ilyich Lenin. The English proletarians will 
say to their children: ‘What a good thing it was 
that the little men of the ‘Labor Party’ did not 
cut the hair and beard of these two giants.” 

In expectation of this day, which I strive to live 
to see, I close my eyes a moment and clearly see 
Lenin’s form on the same chair that Wells had 
seen him and hear, the day after this meeting— 
perhaps it was the very day—his words accom- 
panied by a sigh from his heart: “He is a little 
bourgeois! He is a Philistine!” 

April 6, 1924. 


[ 186 ] 





Lenin The Man 





NATIONALISM IN LENIN? 
oe IN’S internationalism needs no recom- 


mendation. Its distinguishing mark is 

the irreconcilable break, in the first days 
of the world war, with that falsification of inter- 
nationalism that prevailed in the Second Interna- 
tional. The official leaders of ‘‘Socialism,” from 
the parliamentary tribune, by abstract arguments 
in the spirit of the old Cosmopolites, brought the 
interests of the fatherland into harmony with the 
interests of humanity. In practice this led, as we 
know, to the support of the rapacious fatherland 
through the proletariat. 

Lenin’s internationalism is by no means a form 
of reconciliation of Nationalism and Internation- 
alism in words but a form of international revo- 
lutionary action. ‘The territory of the earth inhab- 
ited by so-called civilized man is looked upon as a 
coherent field of combat on which the separate 
peoples and classes wage gigantic warfare against 
each other. No single question of importance can 
be forced into a national frame. Visible and in- 
visible threads connect this question with dozens 

* Pravda, No. 86, April 23rd, 1920. 


[ 189 ] 


LENIN THE MAN 


of phenomena at all ends of the world. In his ap- 
preciation of international factors and powers 
Lenin is freer than most people from national 
prejudices. 

Marx was of the opinion that the philosophers 
had declared the world satisfactory and believed 
it to be his task to transform it. But he, the 
prophet of genius, had not lived to see it. The 
transformation of the old world is now in full 
swing and Lenin is its first worker. His interna- 
tionalism is a practical appreciation of historical 
events and a practical adaptation to their course 
on an international scale and for international 
aims. Russia and her fate are only one element in 
this great historical struggle upon whose outcome 
the fate of humanity depends. 

Lenin’s internationalism needs no recommenda- 
tion. Withal Lenin himself is national to a high 
degree. He is deeply rooted in the new Russian 
history, makes it his own, gives it its most preg- 
nant expression, and thereby reaches the height of 
international action and international influence. 

At first the characterization of Lenin as “na- 
tional’? may seem surprising, and yet it is, funda- 
mentally considered, a matter of course. ‘To be 
able to direct such a revolution, without precedent 
in the history of peoples, as is now taking place 
in Russia, it is most evidently necessary to have 


[ 190 ] 





NATIONALISM IN LENIN 


an indissoluble organic connection with the main 
strength of popular life, a connection which 
springs from the deepest roots. 

Lenin embodies in himself the Russian prole- 
tariat, a youthful class, that politically is scarcely 
older than Lenin himself, withal a deeply na- 
tional class, for the whole past development of 
Russia is bound up with it, in it lies Russia’s en- 
tire future, with it lives and dies the Russian 
nation. Lack of routine and example, of false- 
ness and convention, moreover, firmness of thought 
and boldness of action, a boldness that never de- 
generates into want of understanding, characterize 
the Russian proletariat and also Lenin. 

The nature of the Russian proletariat, that has 
actually made it the most important power in the 
international revolution, had been prepared be- 
forehand by the course of Russian national history, 
by the barbaric cruelty of the most absolute of 
states, the insignificance of the privileged classes, 
the feverish development of capitalism in the 
dregs of exchange, the deterioration of the Rus- 
sian bourgeoisie and their ideology, the degenera- 
tion of their politics. Our “Third Estate” knew 
neither a reformation nor a great revolution and 
could not know them. So the revolutionary prob- 
lems of the proletariat assumed a more compre- 
hensive character. Our historical past knows 


[ 191 | 


LENIN THE MAN 


neither a Luther, nor a Thomas Munzer, neither 
a Mirabeau nor a Danton, nor a Robespierre. For 
that very reason the Russian proletariat has its 
Lenin. What was lacking in tradition was gained 
in revolutionary energy. 

Lenin reflects in himself the Russian workman’s 
class, not only in its political present but also in 
its rustic past which is so recent. This man, who 
is indisputably the leader of the proletariat, not 
only outwardly resembles a peasant, but has also 
something about him which is strongly suggestive 
of a peasant. Facing Smolny stands the statue of 
the other hero of the proletariat of the world: 
Marx on a pedestal in a black frock coat. ‘To be 
sure, this is a trifle, but it is quite impossible to 
imagine Lenin in a black frock coat. In some 
pictures Marx is represented in a broad shirt front 
on which a monocle dangles. 

That Marx was not inclined to coquetry is clear 
to all who have an idea of the Marxian spirit. 
But Marx grew up on a different basis of national 
culture, lived in a different atmosphere, as did 
also the leading personalities of the German work- 
man’s class, with their roots reaching back, not 
to the village, but to the corporation guilds and 
the complicated city culture of the middle ages. 

Marx’s style also, which is rich and beautiful, 
in which strength and flexibility, anger and irony, 


[ 192 ] 





NATIONALISM IN LENIN 


harshness and elegance are combined, betrays the 
literary and ethical strata of all the past German 
socialistic literature since the reformation and 
even before. Lenin’s literary and oratorical style 
is extremely simple, ascetic, as is his whole nature. 
But this strong asceticism has not a shade of moral 
preaching about it. This is not a principle, no 
thought-out system and assuredly no affectation, 
but is simply the outward expression of inward 
concentration of strength for action. It is an eco- 
nomic peasant-like reality on a very large scale. 

The entire Marx is contained in the “Com- 
munistic Manifest,” in the foreword to his “Cri- 
tique,”’ in “Capital.” Even if he had not been the 
founder of the First International he would always 
remain what he is. Lenin, on the other hand, ex- 
pands at once into revolutionary action. His 
works as a scholar mean only a preparation for 
action. If he had never published a single book 
in the past he would still appear in history what 
he now is: the leader of the proletarian revolution, 
the founder of the Third International. 

A clear, scholarly system—materialistic dialec- 
tics—was necessary, to be able to renounce deeds 
of this kind that devolved upon Lenin; it was nec- 
essary but not sufficient. Here was needed that 
mysterious creative power that we call intuition: 
the ability to grasp appearances correctly at once, 


[ 193 ] 


LENIN THE MAN 


to distinguish the essential and important from the 
unessential and insignificant, to imagine the miss- 
ing parts of a picture, to weigh well the thoughts 
of others and above all of the enemy, to put all 
this into a united whole and the moment the “‘for- 
mula” for it comes to his mind, to deal the blow. 
This is intuition to action. On the one side it cor- 
responds with what we call penetration. 

When Lenin, his left eye closed, receives by 
radio the parliamentary speech of a leader of im- 
perialistic history or the expected diplomatic note, 
a web of bloodthirsty reserve and political cant, 
he resembles a damnably proud moujik who won’t 
be imposed upon. This is the high-powered peas- 
ant cunning, which amounts almost to genius, 
equipped with the latest acquisitions of a scholarly 
mind. 

The young Russian proletariat is able to accom- 
plish what only he accomplishes who has plowed 
up the heavy sod of the peasantry to its depths. 
Our whole national past has prepared this fact. 
But just because the proletariat came into power 
through the course of events has our revolution 
suddenly and radically been able to overcome the 
national narrowness and provincial backwardness; 
Soviet Russia became not only the place of ref- 
uge of the Communistic International, but also the 
living embodiment of its program and methods. 


[ 194 ] 





NATIONALISM IN LENIN 


By unknown paths, not yet explored by science, 
on which the personality of man acquires its form, 
Lenin has taken from nationalism all that he 
needed for the greatest revolutionary action in the 
history of humanity. Just because the social rev- 
olution, that has long had its international theo- 
retical expression, found for the first time in Lenin 
its national embodiment, he became, in the true 
sense of the word, the revolutionary leader of the 
proletariat of the world. 


[195 ] 


LENIN WOUNDED? 


OMRADES, the brotherly greeting I hear 

I explain by the fact that in these difficult 

days and hours we all feel as brothers the 

need of closer union with each other and with 

our Soviet organization, and the need of standing 

united under our communistic flag. In these anx- 

ious days and hours when our standard-bearer, 

and with perfect right it can be said, the interna- 

tional standard-bearer of the proletariat, lies on 

his sick bed fighting with the terrible specter of 

death, we are closer to each other than in the hours 
of victory. ... 

The news of the attack on Lenin reached me and 
many other comrades in Svijashk on the Kasan 
front. There blows were falling fast, blows from 
the right, blows from the left, blows on the head. 
But this new blow was a blow in the back from 
ambush. Treacherously it has opened a new front, 
which for the present moment is the most distress- 
ing, the most alarming for us: the front where 
Vladimir Ilyich’s life struggles with death. What- 


ever defeats may be expected by us on this or that 


*Speech made at a session of the All Russian Central Executive 
Committee on September 2nd, 1918. 


[ 196 ] 





LENIN WOUNDED 


front—I am like you firmly convinced of our im- 
minent victory—the defeat of no single part could 
be so difficult, so tragic, for the workmen’s class 
of Russia and the whole world, as would be a fatal 
issue of the fight at the front that runs through 
the breast of our leader. 

One need only reflect in order to understand the 
concentrated hate that this figure has called forth 
and will call forth from all the enemies of the 
workmen’s class. For nature produced a master- 
piece when she created in a single figure an em- 
bodiment of the revolutionary thinking and the 
unbending energy of the workmen’s class. This 
figure is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The gallery of 
leaders of the workmen—of revolutionary fighters 
—is very rich and varied, and like many other 
comrades who have been for three decades in rev- 
olutionary work, I have met in different lands 
many varietics of the type of leaders of workmen, 
of revolutionary representatives of the workmen’s 
class. But in the person of Comrade Lenin we 
have a figure created for our epoch of blood and 
iron. 

Behind us lies the epoch of so-called peaceful 
development of bourgeois society, where contra- 
dictions gradually accumulated, where Europe 
lived through the period of so-called armed peace, 
and blood flowed almost in the colonies alone, 


[ 197 ] 


LENIN THE MAN 


where rapacious capital tore to pieces the more 
backward peoples. Europe enjoyed the so-called 
peace of capitalistic militarism. In this epoch 
were formed and fashioned the most noted lead- 
ers of the European workmen movement. Among 
them we see the brilliant figure of August Bebel, 
the great dead. He reflected the epoch of the 
gradual and slow development of the workmen’s 
class. Along with courage and iron energy, the 
most extreme caution in all movements, an actual 
testing of the ground, the strategy of waiting and 
of preparation were peculiar to him. He reflected 
the process of the gradual molecular accumulation 
of the powers of the workmen’s class—his thought 
went forward step by step, just as the German 
workmen’s class in the time of international reac- 
tion rose slowly from below and freed itself from 
darkness and prejudices. His mental figure grew, 
developed, became stronger and greater, but all 
that on the basis of waiting and preparation. Thus 
August Bebel in his thoughts and methods was 
the best figure of an earlier epoch that already 
belongs to the past. 

Our epoch is woven of another material. This 
epoch where the old accumulated contradictions 
burst out in a terrible explosion, where they tore 
asunder the veil of bourgeois society, where all 
the foundations of international capitalism were 


[ 198 ] 


LENIN WOUNDED 


shattered to the ground by the terrible murdering 
of the people, the epoch which revealed all the 
class oppositions and placed before the people the 
horrible reality of the destruction of millions in 
the name of bare profit interests. And for this 
epoch the history of western Europe has forgot- 
ten, neglected, or failed to bring about the crea- 
tion of the leader—and that not in vain: for all the 
leaders who on the eve of the war enjoyed the 
greatest confidence of the European workmen re- 
flected yesterday but not today. . 

As the new epoch began, the soe of terrible 
convulsions and bloody battles, it went beyond the 
strength of the earlier leaders. It pleased history 
—and that is no chance—to create a figure at a 
single casting in Russia, a figure that reflects in 
itself our entire terrible and great epoch. I re- 
peat that this is no chance. 1847 produced in 
backward Germany the figure of Marx, the great- 
est of all fighters in the realm of thought, who 
pointed out the ways to new history. Germany 
was then a backward land, but history willed it 
that Germany’s intelligentsia should go through 
revolutionary development and that their most 
important representative, who commanded their 
entire knowledge, should break with the bourgeois 
society, place himself on the side of the revolu- 
tionary proletariat, and work out the program of 


[ 199 ] 


LENIN THE MAN 


the workmen’s movement as the theory of develop- 
ment of the workmen’s class. 

What Marx prophesied in that epoch, our 
epoch is called upon to carry out. But she needs 
new leaders, who must be the bearers of the great 
spirit of our epoch in which the workmen’s class 
has lifted itself to the heights of its historic task 
and sees clearly the frontier that it must pass if 
mankind is to live and not fall like carrion on the 
broad highway of history. For this epoch Rus- 
sian history created a new leader. Everything 
that was good in the old revolutionary intelli- 
gentsia, their spirit of self-denial, of courage and 
hatred of oppression, all this was concentrated in 
this figure, which, however, in its youth had 
broken irrevocably with the world of the intelli- 
gentsia on account of their connections with the 
bourgeoisie, and embodied in itself the thought and 
reality of the development of the workmen’s class. 
Relying on the young revolutionary proletariat of 
Russia, this figure made use of the rich experience 
of the international movement of workmen, trans- 
formed its ideology into a lever for action and then 
rose on the political horizon in its entire great- 
ness. It is the figure of Lenin, the greatest man 
of our revolutionary epoch. 

I know, and you know too, comrades, that the 
fate of the workmen does not depend on single per- 

[ 200 ] 





LENIN WOUNDED 


sonalities; that does not mean that personality in 
the history of our movement and of the develop- 
ment of the workmen’s class is of minor impor- 
tance. One person cannot mold the workmen’s 
class anew after its own pattern and image and 
point out to the proletariat consciously this or that 
path of development, but he can help the fulfill- 
ment of the workmen’s tasks and lead them more 
quickly to their goal. The critics have pointed 
out that Karl Marx prophesied the revolution 
would be much nearer than was actually the case. 
They answered the critics with perfect right that 
as Marx stood on a high mountain, the distance 
seemed shorter. 

Many have criticized Vladimir Ilyich, too, 
more than once—and I among them—because he 
did not notice many less conspicuous causes and 
accidental circumstances. I must say that this 
might have been a defect for a political leader in 
a time of “normal” slow development; but this 
was the greatest merit of Comrade Lenin as leader 
of the new epoch. All that is incidental, external, 
of secondary importance is omitted, and only the 
basic, irreconcilable antagonism of the classes re- 
mains in the fearful form of the bourgeois war. 
To cast his revolutionary look into the future, to 
grasp the essential, the fundamental, the impor- 
tant—that was the gift peculiar to Lenin in the 


Reteney 


LENIN THE MAN 


highest degree. Any one to whom it was granted, 
as it was to me in this period, to observe Vladimir 
Ilyich’s work at close range could not fail to look 
with enthusiasm—I repeat the word enthusiasm— 
at this gift of the keen, penetrating mind that re- 
jected all the external, the accidental, the super- 
ficial, in order to perceive the main roads and 
methods of action. The workmen learn to appre- 
ciate those leaders who point out the path of prog- 
ress and follow it without hesitating, even when 
the prejudices of the proletariat itself temporarily 
hinder them. With this gift of a powerful mind 
Vladimir Ilyich also was endowed with an in- 
flexible will. The combination of these char- 
acteristics produces the real revolutionary leader, 
who is molded out of bold, pitiless mind and 
hard, unyielding will. 

What good fortune it is that all that we say, 
hear, and read in resolutions about Lenin is not in 
an obituary form. And yet we were near that. 
. . . We are convinced that on this near front, 
here in the Kremlin, life will conquer and Vladi- 
mir Ilyich will soon return to our ranks. 

When I have said, comrades, that in his cou- 
rageous mind and his revolutionary will he em- 
bodies the workmen’s class, one may say that it is 
an inner symbol, almost a conscious purpose of 
history, that our leader in these heavy hours when 

[ 202 | 


a 


LENIN WOUNDED 


the Russian working class fights on the outer front 
with all its strength, against the Czecho-Slovaks, 
the white guards, the mercenaries of England and 
France—that our leader fights with the wounds 
inflicted on him by the agents of these very white 
guards, Czecho-Slovaks, the mercenaries of Eng- 
land and France. Here lies an inner connection 
and a deep historical symbol. And particularly 
so as we are all convinced that in our struggle with 
the Czecho-Slovak, Anglo-French and _ white 
guard front we grow stronger every day and every 
hour—lI can state that as an eye-witness who has 
just returned from the seat of war—yes, we grow 
stronger every day, we shall be stronger to-morrow 
than we are today, and stronger the day after 
than we shall be tomorrow; for me there is no 
doubt that the day is not distant when I can say 
to you that Kasan, Simbirsk, Samara, Ufa, and the 
other temporarily occupied cities are returning to 
our Soviet family—in the same way we hope that 
the process of recovery of Comrade Lenin will 
go on in rapid measure. 

But even now his image, the inspiring image of 
the wounded leader, who has left the front for a 
time, stands clearly before us. We know that not 
for a moment has he left our ranks, for, even when 
laid low by the treacherous bullet, he rouses us 
all, summons us, and drives us onward. I have 


[ 203 ] 


LENIN THE MAN 


not seen a single comrade, not a single honest 
workman, who let his hands drop under the in- 
fluence of the news of the traitorous attack on 
Lenin, but I have seen dozens who clenched their 
fists, whose hands sought their guns; I have seen 
hundreds and thousands of lips that vowed merci- 
less revenge on the enemies of the proletariat. [ 
do not need to state how the class-conscious fight- 
ers at the front reacted, when they learned that 
Lenin was lying there with two bullets in his body. 
No one can say of Lenin that his character lacks 
metal; but now the metal is no longer in his spirit 
only, but also in his body. Thereby he is even 
dearer to Russia’s working class. 

I do not know if our words and heart-beats 
reach Lenin’s sickbed, but I have no doubt that he 
feels it all. I have no doubt that he knows even 
in his fever how our hearts beat in double, three- 
fold measure. We all recognize now more clearly 
than ever that we are members of one and the same 
communistic Soviet family. Never did the life of 
each of us stand so much in the second or third 
line as at the moment when the life of the great- 
est man of our time is in danger of death. Any 
fool can shoot Lenin’s head to pieces, but to create 
this head anew would be a difficult problem for 
Nature herself. 

But no, he will soon be up again, to think and 


[ 204 ] 





LENIN WOUNDED 


to work, to fight in common with us. In return we 
promise our beloved leader that as long as any 
mental power remains in us, and our hearts throb 
warmly, we shall remain true to the flag of the 
communistic revolution. We shall fight with the 
enemy of the working class to the last drop of 
blood, to our last breath. 


[205 J 


LENIN ILL? 
es OMRADES, this year has put our party to 


a certain test in regard to clearness of 

thought and firmness of will. The test 
was difficult because it was determined by a fact 
that weighs heavily upon the consciousness of all 
party members and the broadest circles of the 
working population—to be more accurate, upon 
the entire working population of our country and 
to a considerable degree of the whole world. I 
speak of Vladimir Ilyich’s illness. When a change 
for the worse took place in his condition in the 
beginning of March, the political bureau of the 
Central Committee met to consider what we ought 
to tell the party and the country about the change 
in Comrade Lenin’s health. I believe you can all 
imagine, comrades, in what state of mind this ses- 
sion of the bureau took place when we had to 
give the party and the country this first serious and 
alarming bulletin. As a matter of course we re- 
mained politicians at this moment, too. No one 
will reproach us for that. We did not think only 


of Comrade Lenin’s health—naturally we were 
*From a report at the Seventh All Russian Party Conference on 


April sth, 1923. 
[ 206 ] 





LENIN ILL 


concerned about his pulse, his heart and his tem- 
perature—but.we also thought what effect the 
number of his heart-beats would have on the polit- 
ical pulse of the workingmen and the party. With 
anxiety, but also with deep faith in the strength 
of the party, we said that we must inform the party 
and the country as soon as the danger was evident. 
No one doubted that our enemies would bestir 
themselves to use this news to confuse the popula- 
tion, particularly the peasants, to start alarming 
rumors, etc., but also no one doubted for a second 
that we must tell the party instantly how things 
were going, because we increase the responsi- 
bility of each party member. Our great party em- 
bracing half a million is a great community with 
great experience, but in this half million men 
Lenin occupies a place that is incomparable. The 
historical past knows no man who has exerted 
such influence, not only on the destiny of his own 
land, but on the destiny of mankind; she has no 
standard with which to measure Lenin’s historical 
significance. And therefore the fact that he has 
been separated from the work for a long time, and 
that his condition is bad, will call forth deep 
political alarm. 

Naturally, naturally, naturally, we know pos- 
itively that the working class will conquer. We 
sing: “No higher being saves us’’—and also “no 


[ 207 ] 


LENIN THE MAN 


tribune.” That is right, but only in the last his- 
torical sense, that is, in so far as the workmen 
would finally conquer, if there had been no Marx, 
no Ulianof Lenin. ‘The workmen themselves 
would have perfected the ideas and methods that 
they need, but it would have been slower. The 
circumstance that the working class has produced 
on both banks of their stream two figures like 
Marx and Lenin is of great advantage for the 
revolution. Marx is the prophet with the tables of 
the law and Lenin the greatest executor of the 
testament, who not only trained the proletarian 
aristocracy as Marx did, but trained classes and 
peoples in the execution of the law, in the most 
difficult situations, and who acted, manoeuvred, 
and conquered. ‘This year, in part, we were 
obliged to do without Lenin in practical work. On 
ideological ground we have recently received hints 
and directions from him—about the peasant ques- 
tion, the state apparatus, and the questions of 
nationality, which will last for years... . 

And now we were obliged to announce the 
change for the worse in his health. We asked 
ourselves in justifiable anxiety what conclusions 
the neutral masses, the peasant and the red army 
would form; for the peasant believes in Lenin in 
the first rank in our state apparatus. Apart from 
the others Ilyich is a great moral capital of the 

[ 208 ] 


f 

F 

i 
} 





LENIN ILL 


state apparatus in the correlations of the workmen 
and the peasants. Will not the peasant think— 
many among us asked this question—that Lenin’s 
policy will go through a change in his long sep- 
aration from the work? How will the party, the 
masses of workmen, and the whole land react? 
. . . When the first alarming bulletins appeared, 
the party united as a whole, grew, and reached a 
higher moral plane. Naturally, comrades, the 
party consists of active men, and men have faults 
and defects and even among the communists there 
is much that is “human, all too human”’ as the Ger- 
mans say, there are conflicts of groups and individ- 
uals, serious and incidental, and there always will 
be, for there is no great party without it. But the 
moral strength, the political specific gravity of a 
party is defined by what comes to the top during 
such tragic experience: the will for unity, dis- 
cipline, or the incidental and personal, the human, 
the all too human. And here, comrades, I believe, 
we can draw our conclusion with absolute cer- 
tainty: when the party saw that we would be de- 
prived of Lenin’s leadership for a long time, it 
drew together, and put aside everything that 
threatened the clearness of its thinking, the unity 
of its will, and its ability to fight. 

Before I took my train for Kharkof I spoke 
with our Moscow commandant, Nicolas Ivano- 


[ 209 | 


LENIN THE MAN 


vich Muralof, whom many of you know as an old 
party comrade, asking how the red army would 
look upon the situation in connection with Lenin’s 
illness. Muralof said: ‘“‘At first the news will be 
like a thunderbolt; they will fall back, and then 
they will think about Lenin more deeply.” Yes, 
comrades, the neutral red army has now, in its 
own way, thought deeply over the role of person- 
ality in history, thought over what we men of the 
old generation as school boys, as students, or young 
workmen, studied in books, weighed and debated, 
in the prisons, and jails, in exile, namely, the rela- 
tion of the “hero” to the “masses,” the subjective 
factor and the objective conditions, etc. And 
now, in 1923, our young red army with a hundred 
thousand heads has thought concretely about this 
question and along with them the All Russian, the 
All Ukrainian, and every other kind of peasant | 
with a hundred million heads has thought over 
the role of Lenin’s personality in history. 

How do our political organs answer this, our 
commissars, and group secretaries? ‘Their answer 
is: Lenin was a genius, a genius is born once in 
a century, and the history of the world knows only 
two geniuses as leaders of the working class: Marx 
and Lenin. No genius can be created even by the 
decree of the strongest and most disciplined party, 
but the party can try as far as it is possible to make 


[ 210 ] 





LENIN ILL 


up for the genius as long as he is missing, by 
doubling its collective exertions. ‘That is the 
theory of personality and class which our political 
organs present in popular form to the neutral red 
army. And this theory is right: Lenin is not 
working for the moment and so WE must work 
doubly as brothers, watch the dangers with double 
care, guard the revolution from them with double 
energy, make use of the possibilities of further de- 
velopment with double persistency. And we shall 
all do this, from the members of the Central Com- 
mittee to the neutral red army. 

Our work, comrades, is very wearisome, very 
paltry, even if it is carried on in the frame of the 
large plan; the methods of our work are “prosaic”: 
bookkeeping, calculation, taxation of products and 
grain export, we do all this step by step, stone on 
stone. But is there not the danger of the degen- 
eration of the party into the petty? And we can 
no more permit such degeneration than we can 
permit even a trifling violation of their unity of 
action; for even if the present period lasts quite 
a long time, still it cannot last forever. Perhaps 
not even long. A revolutionary explosion on a 
large scale, such as the beginning of a European 
revolution, may happen sooner than many of us 
think. If from Lenin’s numerous strategic lessons 
we wish to remember something with especial 


eg 


LENIN THE MAN 


clearness, let it be what he calls the policy of the 
great changes: ‘Today on the barricades and to- 
morrow in the seat in the Third Duma, today 
a summons to world revolution, to the interna- 
tional October revolution, and tomorrow nego- 
tiations with Kiihlmann and Czernin to sign the 
disgraceful peace of Brest-Litovsk. The situation 
changed or we believed it changed; the march to 
the west followed, ‘‘to Warsaw!” ‘The situation 
forced us to change our method; we had to sign 
the Riga peace, as you all know, just as disgraceful 
a peace. ... And then again persistent work, 
brick upon brick, economy, restriction of the staff, 
control. Are five or three telephonists necessary? 
If three are enough, don’t take five, because then 
the peasant must hand over a few more poods of 
grain. Daily crumbs of petty work, but look, on 
the Ruhr, the flame of revolution flares up; now, 
will it find us degenerate? 

No, comrades, no! We are not degenerating. 
We change our methods, ways of working—but 
the revolutionary instinct of self-preservation of 
the party is the highest thing for us. We study 
bookkeeping and at the same time we keep a sharp 
eye to the east and west and events will not surprise 
us. By self-cleaning and enlarging of the prole- 
tarian basis our strength grows. ... We will 
make a compromise with the peasantry and the 


arent 


LENIN ILL 


little bourgeoisie, we will yield to the Nep? peo- 
ple, but we will not allow the Nep people and the 
little bourgeoisie into the party. No, we will burn 
them out of the party with sulphuric acid and 
glowing iron. And at the Twelfth Congress, 
which will be the first congress since the October 
revolution without Vladimir Ilyich, and besides 
one of the few congresses in the history of our 
party without him, we shall say to each other that 
we must write or cut with a sharp pencil the chief 
commands in our consciousness: not to grow hard 
—consider the skill of the sudden changes, 
manoeuvre without breaking up the ranks, make a 
compromise with temporary and lasting comrades, 
but do not let them into the party. Remain what 
you are, the advance guard of world revolution! 
And when the sound of the storm reaches here 
from the west, and it will resound, then whatever 
burdens us, bookkeeping, calculation, and Nep, we 
will answer without hesitation and without delay: 
We are revolutionaries from head to foot, we were 
$0, we remain so, we shall remain so to the end. 


*The initials of the New Economic Policy. 


Pers 


LENIN DEAD 


ENIN is no more. We have lost Lenin. 

The dark laws that govern the work of the 

arteries have destroyed his life. Medicine 

has proved itself powerless to accomplish what 

was passionately hoped for, what millions of hu- 
man hearts demanded. 

How many, unhesitatingly, would have sacri- 
ficed their own blood to the last drop to revive, 
to renew the work of the arteries of the great 
leader, Lenin—lLlyich, the unique, who cannot 
be replaced. But no miracle occurred where sci- 
ence was powerless. And now Lenin is no more. 
These words descend upon our consciousness 
like gigantic rocks falling into the sea. Is it cred- 
ible, can it be thought of? 

The consciousness of the workers of the whole 
world cannot grasp this fact; for the enemy is 
still very strong, the way is long, and the great 
work, the greatest of history, is unfinished; for the 
workman class of the world needed Lenin as per- 
haps no one in the history of the world has yet been 
needed. 

The second attack of illness, which was more 


[ 214 ] 





LENIN DEAD 


severe than the first, lasted more than ten months. 
The arteries “played” constantly, according to the 
bitter expression of the physicians. It was a ter- 
tible play with the life of Lenin. Improvement 
could be expected, almost complete recovery, but 
also catastrophe. We all expected recovery, but 
catastrophe happened. The breathing center of 
the brain refused to function and stifled the center 
of that mind of great genius. 

And now Vladimir Ilyich is no more. The 
party is orphaned. The workmen’s class is 
orphaned. This was the very feeling aroused by 
the news of the death of our teacher and leader. 

How shall we advance, shall we find the way, 
shall we not go astray? For Lenin, comrades, is 
no longer with us! 

Lenin is no more, but Leninism endures, The 
immortal in Lenin, his doctrine, his work, his 
method, his example, lives in us, lives in the party 
that he founded, lives in the first workmen’s State 
whose head he was and which he guided. 

Our hearts are now so overcome with grief, be- 
cause all of us, thanks to the great favor of history, 
were born contemporaries of Lenin, worked with 
him, and learned from him. Our party is Lenin- 
ism in practice, our party is the collective leader of | 
the workers. In each of us lives a small part of ' 
Lenin, which is the best part of each of us. 


[215 ] 


LENIN THE MAN 


How shall we continue? With the lamp of 
Leninism in our hands. Shall we find the way?— 
With the collective mind, with the collective will 
of the party we shall find it! 

And tomorrow, and the day after, for a week, 
a month, we shall ask, Is Lenin really dead? For 
his death will long seem to us an improbable, an 
impossible, a terrible arbitrariness of nature. 

May the pain we feel, that stabs our hearts each 
time we think that Lenin is no more, be for each 
of us an admonition, a warning, an appeal: Your 
responsibility is increased. Be worthy of the 
leader who trained you! 

In grief, sorrow, and affliction we bind our 
ranks and hearts together; we unite more closely 
for new struggles. Comrades, brothers, Lenin is 


no longer with us. Farewell, Ilyich! Farewell, 
Leader! 


Tiflis Station, January 22nd, 1924. 


[ 216 ] 











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